


Church of Beasts

by Freyjabee



Series: Sleeping Sickness [5]
Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: AU, Addiction, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, Experimentation, F/F, F/M, Family, M/M, Mental Illness, Multi, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 23:57:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17838488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freyjabee/pseuds/Freyjabee
Summary: Zeref is at his best when he's being his worst. Angel is the spark to his magnesium and Ultear likes the way he burns.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story happens at the same time as Stars in the Sky

Forever and ever  
A night in search of a day

* * *

Everyone overreacted, in Zeref's opinion. Not about any one thing, but all things, always. Crying. Screaming. Peering into a dark-dark like their dark was the only dark.

Zeref met the absurd, the shock and the pain, with a stoicism that unsettled most everyone he'd ever known.

He could watch his father blow through his entire pay cheque in one sitting and listen to his mother scream about it and it didn't make him sad or helpless and small, it was like his chest was just one big sound chamber, it echoed and echoed and echoed, but it faded without ever leaving a mark.

He could watch Erik's dog get hit by a car and there was just an empty pit where he thought _something_ should be.

He watched UP without getting wet-eyed when Natsu would bawl.

People called him strange and not because he swerved to crush a snake's head with his bike tire when he was six-years-old just to see what would happen, but because he did _nothing_ afterwards, straight-faced _._ If he'd crowed excitedly, it would have been easier, because people understood better when the darkness was riddled with light.

In Grade Seven, his teacher, Mister Norman, had a massive coronary. He vomited up all of his butter chicken on his desk, slumped in it and died. Other children screamed, some cried, some even laughed because it was grade seven and they didn't know what else to do.

Zeref just sat in the chaos, feeling nothing except slightly nauseated by the smell.

"There's something wrong with him," his father had confided that evening. "He's not right."

"Because he didn't cry like the other kids?" his mother asked. "Because you know, everyone is different."

"Not different like he is. He needs help."

"He needs his family not to call him a freak."

"Maybe he should know," his father returned.

That turned into one of the biggest fights he could remember. Natsu's favourite plate was broken and he started to cry. Zeref took him up to his room and put noise-cancelling headphones on him while they played retro video games and he listened to the loud conversation below.

His mother put up a good fight but she lost in the end because that's what she _always_ did.

Zeref saw a therapist the week following Mister Norman's death and learned words like dissociative, eremitic, and apathetic. Apathy was a sickness, he was told. And empathy was its cure.

But the truth was, it wasn't about light and dark. It was about grey. Endless seas of grey that stretched on and on. He trained like he'd train for an exam. _I lost my Dad today, Zeref,_ and the correct answer was, _I'm sorry to hear that, Doctor Raquel._ And when people said happy stuff, too, like, _Your cousin is pregnant, Zeref,_ he was supposed to say, _Congratulations!_ Exclamation included. They gave him drugs. They did not make him enthusiastic, exuberant or earnest. Maybe if they had, his medicated brain would have liked them. But no, they took the dead inside and they smothered its rotting stench like Borax would. They made him fuzzy and tired and too drab.

So he filled the prescription and buried a pill in his mother's bird of paradise plant every morning. One day, it was going to die, and he'd have to explain why a bunch of yellow and blue pills were degrading in clumpy dirt and that would be tedious. Like acting _okay_ , and _alright_ would be. But he did not like those pills. And he did not like curious glances, taken-aback-stares when he looked on straight-faced when some tragedy would strike and people thought he should be upset but he wasn't.

So he learned to act.

And he learned to act well, imitating Natsu's injuries when he got them. Broken finger? Yeah. Mushed nose. Black eye. Cut calf. And then he imitated his response so he could get it _just right._ It worked so well, sometimes, even he believed it.

* * *

His phone kept autocorrecting to ducking. He'd never once meant ducking in his life. He erased the words and wrote them out again. He had an amazing capacity for patience. He'd been at it for five minutes, though, and had burned through the majority of his cigarette without smoking a bit of it. Eventually, his phone just rang, Ultear was less patient and was sick of Zeref's … popping up and disappearing.

"You could have just called."

"I'm not supposed to use my cellphone in the hospital."

"And you care so much about the rules."

Some, anyway.

She asked, "Was it the guy?" She'd put him on the trail of a mugger the night Natsu got jumped in the street, someone bragging that he'd stolen a kid's wallet and cell phone.

"No." Zeref examined the red cracks between his knuckles, the swollen bruises, the blues and the blacks. "The wallet belonged to some skinny kid. Have you heard anything else?"

"You know I haven't or I would have said something."

She wouldn't have kept it from him. He _knew_ that. He just needed to hear it. "Keep looking."

"What are you going to do when you find them, Zeref?"

His shield cracked and the apathy he spent _so long_ smoothing came roaring up to the surface and he could do nothing to tame it. "Kill them." He would. He would kill them all.

"You know you can't smoke in the hospital, right?"

Zeref hit the _End_ button and put his phone back in his pocket. A girl was watching him. Her hair was so blonde it was white in its high ponytail, her eyes were rimmed with black liner and her scrubs were undone to her grey tank top. Her chest was covered in tattoos. Ugly creatures. Some of them had halos. Some were screaming in agony.

"Yeah."

She came further into the room and closed the door. She put her hip against a towel cart and smiled. "You're Natsu's brother, right?"

"How would you know that?"

"I was his nurse when he first came in. Angel." She put out her hand. Zeref stared at her chipped red nail polish. She took her hand away. "What are you guys doing back? He didn't get into another fight, did he?"

"He's getting his cast off."

She beamed. "So then why are you skulking in the supply closet?"

He liked the sharp curve of her lipsticked mouth. "I might ask you the same."

She sucked on her bottom lip, still smiling. "Can you keep a secret?"

He had them in spades. No one knew about the sickness in his head. No one knew about the gun under his bed. No one knew he thought of being dead. "It's one of the things I'm good at."

She came towards him. Zeref waited to see what she'd do. She smelled like lavender as she reached behind him and jiggled a panel loose on the wall. Behind it was a white paper bag. She opened it up. Pills. Lots and lots of pills in plastic bags.

"You're a bad nurse."

"Do you know anyone that's looking to buy?"

It felt like someone had grabbed his chest and torn a huge gap in it, and it was the echoing chamber once again. He did not like the pills the doctors prescribed, but he liked these. "Maybe a couple."

"I'm done work now," she said. "Your brother should be done soon, too."

Zeref took his keys from his pocket.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

We're used to the night; we take more than we're able

* * *

Coffee's bitter scent coiled in Zeref's nose. He breathed it in deep, deep, deep before he took a drink. It warmed up his guts and made him feel a shade more human. Like he could possibly deal with his mother sitting across from him.

She looked very presentable in a white button-down shirt and a blazer, a pencil skirt on her hips, nice, reasonable shoes on her feet. Business-like and professional.

"New job?"

"Dispatch," she said.

"When did you start?"

"A couple days ago."

So it would be at least three weeks before she got her first pay.

She touched his cheek gently and he thought he should feel bad for being so cynical. Her fingers smelled like St Ives hand cream and it reminded him of his childhood when she'd brush his hair back from his forehead and tell him how handsome he was. Then she'd make him and Natsu blueberry pancakes. "I don't get to see you anymore. I _miss_ you."

"I miss you, too." He thought. There was a longing in his chest when he looked at her and whether that was because she represented a time in his life when things were simple or because she was his mother and she had a way of making things look like they could have definition and meaning, he wasn't sure.

"You should bring Natsu to the house for dinner."

"Dad doesn't want me there."

"Of course he does."

He didn't. "I make him uncomfortable."

Her fingers moved from his cheek into his hair. "Baby, don't say stuff like that."

The truth. He reached for a feeling he'd seen others wear but couldn't quite emulate in the mirror. He thought it should sort of feel like shame and sadness mixed together. Hurt. Betrayal. "Just tell me how much money you need."

She studied him carefully and Zeref knew he'd gotten his expression wrong. "Have you been taking your medication?"

What was it about mothers? How could they see through your most glamourous bullshit?

"Baby…" she hedged. "You need to take your pills. They're important."

"Just tell me how much money you need."

Her hand fell away; her eyes got hard. The kind of hard they'd been when Zeref's dad told him to get out of the house and she stood by and did nothing. "Our property tax is coming out. And the phone bill is coming due."

"A grand?"

"That should be fine."

He gave her two so she wouldn't call him again so soon.

* * *

Zeref's bedroom door opened and Angel looked in. She wore a green tube dress and tall black socks, despite the cold. Behind her was Ultear, who dressed much more reasonably in a pair of black jeans and a loose-fitting black shirt. She looked at Zeref in the same way she _always_ looked at Zeref. Things always went sideways for him when he let her look at him like that. Doctor Raquel would call them co-dependants. Unhealthy. She worshipped him. Made him feel powerful. Made him want to do all manner of things he shouldn't really want to do, not if he was being _level_ and _normal._

The way he felt under her watchful eye, though. Fuck. He could burn the fucking world down. He could set himself on fire. He could fuck everything and it wouldn't even matter.

Ultear closed the door while Angel came to the bed. She was just as bad as Ultear, bringing Perks and telling him it was okay to want them. It was okay to stare at his ceiling for days, thinking about chasing a bigger, better high. Binging left him feeling like a scarecrow, but the space in between? When he wasn't a man and he wasn't a husk? He would die for that. _Was_ dying for that.

Angel had a little round glass mirror covered in white lines. She had a glass tube. Once she sat on the bed, one leg crossed beneath her, she put the end in her nose and snorted one line. She handed it to Zeref and though he thought, _this is a bad idea,_ he snorted the other. Ultear draped over his shoulder and snorted the last. Usually, she was his rock. She was fucking crazy, yeah, but she was also always rooted in reality. With Angel there, something was _different_ with her _._ She felt dangerous and Zeref was fucking addicted to it.

_That's a bad way._

Bad, bad, bad.

It made him want to be dangerous, too.

Angel ran her fingers through the side of his hair, just over his ear, like his mother had. Her nails were short and round and dug into his scalp. "What are you thinking about, baby?" The same pet names, too, like they had the same deep-seated history. Maybe they did. She'd been hanging around for two weeks but she had a way of making it feel like it'd been forever. He didn't hate it. Not really. It added to his façade. Normal guys had fucked up girls like Angel breathing life into their bad decisions.

The Perks grabbed hold of him and he laughed. "Crazy fucking shit." Dark. Dark stuff. Stuff he only ever thought about when the sun set.

Angel glowed. Ultear looked like she was an addict staring down a hit of heroin, daring it to fuck with her. She wanted to be fucked with. He touched her leg and she jolted a little like she'd been stung by a bee. She wet her lips nervously.

"What kind of crazy shit?" Angel leaned into him. Her breath smelled like vodka. It wasn't good to mix. Not ever. Angel wasn't the kind of girl that paid attention to stuff like that, though.

"You ever think you're too fucking crazy for this world?" he asked loosely. "You ever just look at everyone around you and think they just don't fucking get it?"

Angel leaned back, arms behind her, chest pushed out. Her dress was riding low and she wasn't in a bra. "I get it."

"She doesn't get it," Ultear contradicted. No one could understand him, she meant. She wanted to, though.

Zeref bet she didn't.

He reached under his mattress and felt the heavy weight of steel. Ultear's eyes got slightly wider. Angel's were still closed; her head was still tilted back.

Zeref knocked out the wheel of the gun and pulled out all of the bullets. He picked one out of the pile again and put it in the chamber. He flicked it back in and sent it spinning, so he had no idea where the bullet ended up. "This is what I think about." He put the snout to his head. He'd spent his entire life making bad decisions, waiting for someone to tell him to stop. Usually, they did. These girls in this room, though?

Ultear's chest rose and fell nervously, her eyes showed too much of the white. But she loved a good game of chicken. A challenge. And what was the biggest challenge but to Fate herself?

Zeref's guts tingled with nerves, all the blood rushed to his head and he felt so, so high. So unbelievably fucking _high_. He settled the hammer down and pulled the trigger.

The gun clicked.

Ultear's breath sobbed out. Zeref gave her the gun. She lifted her hand to take it but couldn't quite make her shaking fingers wrap around the handgrip.

Angel snatched it away from her and put it against her temple. She pulled the trigger without any hesitation. Zeref jumped when he heard the click. Angel laughed and it sounded as high as he felt.

Ultear glowered at them both, annoyed at being shown up. "This is a fucking stupid game."

"Then don't play." Angel handed the gun back to Zeref. Ultear snatched it out of his hand and pressed it against her temple. Her eyes squeezed so, so tight, and then she pulled the trigger.

Another click.

 _This is the time,_ Zeref thought and knew it deep in his bones. When he put that gun to his head and he pulled the trigger, the bullet would be waiting in that chamber and he would be splattered against his bedroom wall, all over Ultear, who sat so close beside him, and Angel. No more pretending. No more _apathy._ No more anything.

He closed his eyes and thought of serenity.

Natsu shattered it; it was his gift. He came bursting into the apartment and though there was a door between them, Zeref felt like he'd been caught in the most intimate act. He thumbed the hammer back into place and engaged the safety. He put the gun beneath his bed and pulled away from Ultear, Angel. He had an erection he had to tuck into the belt of his pants. Finally, he was ready.

When he came out into the living room, Natsu was shucking off his jacket. "Hey."

"Are you hungry?" Zeref asked.

"Yeah." Natsu was always hungry.

"Sit down. I'll make us something." There was KD in the cupboard.

He went through the motions, putting a pot on the stove, set to high because he was impatient, opening the box and adding the noodles before the water was finished boiling. Then he stood there, feeling his temple, where the gun had pressed in, and wondering why, when he'd never shown anyone that before, he'd shown Angel and Ultear his favourite game of Russian Roulette.

The best times to play were when he was fresh off a seven-day binge, lying in pain on his floor. He pulled the trigger every time and the gun had never gone off. He figured either he was really fucking lucky or God hated him.

He split the KD into four bowls and handed them out to everyone. Then he turned on the TV and watched a reboot of the old Batman while they ate. Angel picked at her bowl. Natsu ended up finishing it, and Zeref's, too, because he felt too high to eat much. Ultear finished her bowl and then slumped on the couch like it'd been great effort.

The Joker was laughing on TV and Angel was climbing into Zeref's lap. There was another Perk in her hand. She pulled down his lip with her middle finger and slid the pill into his mouth with her index. Zeref swallowed it down with a beer on the coffee table. It was cold. Did he get it? He didn't remember.

Angel rubbed her hands over his middle and kept moving her hips and his thoughts kept blanking. He forgot Natsu and Ultear were there until Angel bit him and he hissed and Ultear huffed exaggeratedly. There was no mistaking what she thought of the whole ordeal.

She lit a bong and passed it to Natsu. He smoked and then he began to clean. Zeref saw it all on the periphery. He knew he should get up and help but Angel was pulling on his shirt, getting it over his head and she was pulling up the skirt of her dress, making him touch her through her damp underwear, and his head was a blank mess.

Hours passed like minutes.

Natsu's phone dinged out a One Up sound from Super Mario Bros, bringing Zeref back to reality. His brother was shrugging into his leather jacket.

"Where are you going?"

"Out."

Which only meant one thing. "Law School's back in town?"

"Don't call her that."

There were worse things he could call her, that he _wanted_ to call her. Girls like Law School Lucy didn't understand people like the Dragneels. They didn't have rusting out trucks and mothers begging them for money, they didn't have Perks scattered over their coffee table and bong water smelling up their sink when they cleaned their artillery. They were good girls, and good girls fucked with people like them. They gave them a taste of something really fucking good and then they always, _always_ took it away.

Conveying that seemed like a lot of effort. Zeref only said, "Be careful, Natsu."

"Yeah." The door closed behind him. Ultear locked it and came to Zeref with her shirt off. her bra was midnight blue. She threw it to the couch and got behind Angel. She worked on getting Zeref's pants open. Angel turned and glared at her. "What do you think you're doing?"

Ultear looked like she'd been slapped.

It was tempting to sit back and let the calamity unfold, but that's not what a normal person would do. "Ultear's alright."

Those were the right words for Angel, but the wrong ones for Ultear. She went from looking shocked to looking mad. People were complex. It was a good thing he knew Ultear.

He grabbed her forearm before she could sneak away and put her hand on his cock. He closed eyes, bent his back, used the right sigh. She was his again. This time, Angel didn't complain when Ultear took him out of his pants and sucked him off. She stood, got rid of her clothes, and settled back down again.

"I need to go to the hospital to get more Perks for us."

"Later." Zeref had found a condom in his wallet. He put it on and Ultear guided him into Angel. She was good at sharing. Angel was not. She let Ultear touch her and even seemed to enjoy it, reaching behind herself and grabbing Ultear by the back of the head, pulling her in so she could rim her while she got fucked, but there was a selfishness in Angel that Zeref was sure was going to cause him problems later down the road.

She sulked when he pulled out of her and told Ultear to get on the couch on her knees and told Angel to get beneath her. He thought she liked it, though, when he grabbed her hair and made her lick Ultear's clit while he fucked her.

Zeref made a case study of them, giving Ultear more attention than he gave Angel, then switching, and seeing how they both responded. It wasn't very often he got this close to jealousy.

* * *

Zeref's house was full of strangers. It was like that. People came and went all the time. Sometimes, they were looking for something to get them through the night, a pill, some bud, sometimes, they just wanted to sit in the smoke of cigarettes and dope and pretend that they were part of _this_. What this was, Zeref didn't know. People just liked being around him, he supposed. He didn't know why. They looked at him in fascination or they looked at him in disgust, but they always looked at him.

It made him feel powerful.

Someone put on some Zeppelin and he slouched back into the ratty couch, letting the guitars pick him up and drag him higher and higher and higher until he felt like he was going to fall and burst open like a rotten watermelon. Look at all the poison in your head. Look at it bleed out when you're dead.

"We should go to the hospital now before I'm too fucked up to get the pills," Angel said.

"He can't drive," Ultear responded.

Angel looked directly at Zeref. "Can you?"

_Can I?_

"You'll get a DUI, Zeref. Don't."

He needed his license.

Angel said, "What about Natsu?"

"What _about_ Natsu?" Ultear asked.

"He can take me."

"To steal drugs from your work?" Ultear snorted and looked at Zeref, expecting him to say no because he didn't fuck around when it came to Natsu. Natsu was the better of them. He wasn't rotten. He could _do_ this. Be normal.

Zeref liked the way Ultear was incredulous and he liked the way Angel looked victorious, though, when he shrugged. It made him laugh his dead laugh and it made Ultear bristle. She crossed her arms and turned her back on Zeref, choosing instead to talk to a girl with pink hair whose name Zeref didn't know.

Natsu came home; Zeref didn't know what time it was. It was dark out. He took in the party stoically.

"There he is," Angel said in a sticky-sweet voice.

Zeref organized his thoughts. "Have you been drinking?"

"Me? No," Natsu said hesitantly. "Why?"

"Because he wants you to drive me to the hospital," Angel said.

Natsu looked her over as if hunting for injury. Of course, he wouldn't find any. "Why?"

"Because I asked." Angel slipped from Zeref's lap and grabbed up her backpack beside the couch. "What do you say, Natsu?"

He was still looking at Zeref, searching for an explanation and part of Zeref, the reasonable Zeref, told himself that this was a bad idea. He was setting his brother up and he shouldn't. It wasn't what a good older brother would do. But then Natsu said, "I guess," and it was suddenly out of his hands.

When Natsu left with Angel, Ultear when with them. Someone asked why and Zeref honestly didn't have an answer, though he tried to think of what Doctor Raquel would say if he asked her what she thought. She might say something about competition and jealousy, or maybe something about them being friends. He would then tell her about the mean glint in Angel's eye as Ultear tongued her and she'd get uncomfortable for a split second before burying that under professionalism.

He considered perhaps _he_ should be a therapist. He would listen to peoples dirties with a smooth expression, thinking things like, _are they more fucked up than me?_ and congratulating himself when he finally found someone he thought _was._

Distantly, Zeref heard yelling. He dismissed it at first. People yelled in this part of town all the time.

But then he saw the red and blue pulse of police lights and something told him something was very, very wrong. Suddenly, he knew with certainty that it was Natsu and he felt something sink in his guts. Not quite fear, but anger.


	3. Chapter 3

Welcome to my dark side  
It's gonna be a long night

* * *

Zeref used to think doctors were only for when you had a sore throat, a fever, or a broken bone. Doctors were for anti-depressants and for recommendations to psychiatrists.

Then he got kicked out of his parents and moved into the closed-up movie store, which was questionably legal—it was zoned commercially, not residentially, but he needed a place to stay and Invel said it was good, so Zeref took it—and talked to all the people his mom told him not to, and discovered heroin. He loved heroin. He loved heroin like a fish loved water.

It was Gildarts Clive that pulled him out of a snowy ditch when he'd stumbled in one November night five years ago, and it was Gildarts Clive that told him doctors were good for other things, too. Methadone. Methadone for when Zeref decided things had come far enough. He had issues, yeah, but he wasn't that skid, the one that walked around town toothless, babbling nonsense, selling his brother's china for a fix and robbing his old friends.

So he went to the doctor and sat in the chair, twitching and picking and just always in motion, hankering for the fix he'd denied himself.

The doctor didn't really say much, and maybe that was why Zeref decided he didn't like him. He looked at Zeref over his glasses as he scribbled out a script and told him to go to the pharmacy. There, a surly old pharmacist dispensed some methadone into a plastic cup, mixed with Tang, and watched him choke it all back.

"Same time tomorrow," he was told. "And if you miss three days in a row, you need to see your doctor again and get a new script."

Zeref went back until he didn't shoot heroin anymore, and then he had his methadone cut back and back and back. Sometimes he wanted to claw out his eyes and scream and itch his skin away until there was nothing left, and sometimes, if he was distracted, it was okay. He couldn't really predict the day. He didn't really know much during that time, just that he'd found the first thing he'd ever loved and it was heroin and he couldn't have it anymore.

That's how he felt coming down off Angel's Perks. He sat in the old pharmacy, jerking his leg up and down, scaring the little old lady that sat in the chair of the blood pressure machine staring at him like he'd grown two heads. He wanted to rip hers off.

He closed his eyes and thought of Natsu sitting in the cell of Magnolia's constabulary, waiting for Jude Heartfilia to pardon him for assault against the three men that Natsu claimed would have jumped him, Angel and Ultear in the parking lot behind their building on their way back from the hospital; he thought of Jude Heartfilia's smug face in Magnolia's police station, and he thought about how he absolutely believed it was no accident that those men were waiting for Natsu. He thought about how, as the fight happened, he was so fucking stoned, he didn't hear it until he saw the lights on the cruiser, and he thought about the blood on Natsu's face. Ultear's bloody pipe, and Angel's clean hands.

Fucking. Angel.

Zeref heard his name and leapt to attention so fast, he knocked over his neighbour's cane. She shrank back as though he was going to hit her with it. He made himself _breathe_ , stoop, pick it up, and hand it off with one of his practiced smiles. It didn't quite fit on his mouth, but she accepted it, like everyone who was not his mother did, and Zeref was able to give her the cane and move on.

The Pharmacist waited for him inside a plain cubicle. It was the exact same surly man that weened him off heroin years before.

"Zeref." He had a piece of paper in hand with Zeref's script on it but Zeref knew he was recognized, and the pharmacist wasn't at all surprised to see him back again. "How have you been?"

Zeref didn't respond; he didn't come here for small talk. The pharmacist waddled back to his dispensary.

Methadone hadn't changed. It still came in a plastic cup filled with Tang. Zeref shot it all back in one go, nearly choking, and slammed the cup down like he was at a bar. The juice spread through his stomach and almost immediately, his nerves stopped feeling like stripped and frayed wire.

He didn't say thank you to the pharmacist, there'd be a chance tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, until his dose was decreased to nothing and he was deemed cured.

Angel was waiting for him outside his apartment when he finally made it home. It was too cold for a short white skirt and a tank top that showed off her smooth stomach when she stretched, but under her fur-lined coat, that's just what she wore.

"Hi, baby."

Zeref wasn't angry anymore, he was numb, but he walked right past her like he was, emulating how his parents acted when they were furious with each other.; he'd had twenty-four years of practice. He was an excellent actor.

"Zeref, wait."

A snowplough had come through the parking lot and he could see the spot where Natsu's blood stained the ground red, all the way down to the concrete.

He walked with more authority.

"Zeref, hang _on_." Angel grabbed his hand. She didn't have the same survival instincts as the old lady in the pharmacy.

Zeref brought up short and forced his lungs to expand until they hurt. Then he struggled to organize his thoughts. First step was removing his hand from Angel's. "Don't touch me. Don't come near me." He wished he hadn't shown her his gun. He didn't like that she knew that about him. He wanted to pull it out of her head and stomp the memory dead.

Angel stepped in front of him so he had to look at her. "What did I do?"

"Brought Perks into my house. Took my brother to the hospital so you could steal more of your drugs. Dropped a fucking pill bottle with a name on it so shitty Jude Heartfilia could lord it over his head." _Break it off with Lucy or I'll encourage those men you attacked to press charges on_ top _of theft of a controlled substance with intent to sell._ There was no way what he was doing was legal, but Zeref didn't know how to squash him and neither did Natsu.

"I didn't _mean_ to drop the bottle, Zeref, obviously."

"Irrelevant. Natsu was fucking _arrested_."

"Ultear's right about one thing, I guess, you're fucking prickly when Natsu's involved. He's a big boy; if he wants to help—"

"No." Zeref didn't realize he was in her face until fear flitted across her eyes, lightning fast.

She tucked it away, though, and fired back. "You know, you willingly took my drugs and fucking _thanked_ me for them, which says to me that I didn't fuck up your life any more than you wanted it fucked. You're just misplacing the blame."

Funny, Doctor Raquel would say the same thing. Zeref pushed Angel out of the way. She stumbled but recovered. "Zeref!"

"Don't come here anymore." He jammed his key into the lock and then slammed the door in her face. It would have been more impactful if the stupid bedsheet he was using as a curtain didn't flutter down so he had to look at her as he locked the door again but that was just kind of how his life went.

She gave him the finger and disappeared back from whatever Hellmouth she crawled from.

Except for Natsu's snoring, the apartment was silent. Zeref sat at the table and glared at a hole in the wall he didn't remember last week. Someone must have put their fist through it. Hell, it might have been him. It'd need to be fixed.

Natsu woke up sometime around eleven. His face was fucked up. There was a lump on the side of his head and his eye was black and swollen. He fell onto the couch and stared at the TV, though it was off. Zeref went into the kitchen and started making pancakes. Blueberry ones. He'd arrange the blueberries in some to make them grin like jack-o'-lanterns like he used to when they still lived at their parents and he was babysitting. Sometimes, he thought he was dead inside, but sometimes, he'd feel okay and he liked to see Natsu smile.

He checked on him again when he had the batter prepared. Natsu was still in the same position, staring at the same spot, wearing an ugly expression Zeref wasn't used to seeing on his face. "What are you thinking about?"

Natsu looked up and it was like this was the first time he noticed Zeref was there. He announced, "The last time you made me blueberry pancakes."

It used to happen every Saturday morning, right up until Natsu was fifteen. Breakfast, then they'd hang out. Sometimes, they'd go to the movies, sometimes, they'd take their bikes ripping through the quarry. When Natsu got a little older, Zeref would take him to the mall. He'd leave him in the candy store, where Ultear worked, and sneak out with Ultear to smoke a joint. When they'd come back in, Natsu would have a bag full of candy he'd pay Ultear for and they'd spend the rest of the afternoon rotting out their teeth.

The last time Zeref made him pancakes, though, was the day he'd been kicked out of his parents' house.

They'd come up the front steps after their movie, Zeref saw the mail laying on the porch, scattered by an incoming storm, and a hydro bill that said _Final Notice_ , and suddenly, apathy had stepped aside for rage. He couldn't even pinpoint where it all came from. It was just there.

Rage was addicting in the same way heroin was. In between long, dizzy bouts of feeling _nothing,_ it brought him to life, and he would always ride that wave. He couldn't not.

Natsu shifted on the couch and Zeref pulled away from the memory. "They're your favourite."

Natsu chewed his cheek and nodded. "Yeah."

The butter was burning. Zeref ducked back into the kitchen and started again with fresh butter. He didn't stop until he had a towering stack of pancakes for Natsu and two for himself because he didn't feel hungry. Addiction did that to you. He just knew he had to feed his head.

He didn't eat immediately, choosing instead to watch Natsu cut into his pancakes, chew, swallow, thinking about Jude Heartfilia, a bigtime lawyer, and Lucy Heartfilia, his Star of a daughter. Law School Lucy. His pride and joy. He'd never let her get scuffed with gutter trash. He'd even hire thugs to kick the fuck out of that gutter trash to make his point clear. He wouldn't stop, either, not until he was _understood._

_And you gave him the ammunition he needed to fill Natsu full of holes, asking him to take Angel._

Natsu swallowed a lump of pancakes. "What?"

It was easy to speak when you weren't bogged down by little worries like, _what if he's mad at me?_ Zeref said, "I fucked up. I asked you to take Angel to the hospital and I knew what she was doing. I wasn't thinking straight, though. If I hadn't…"

"Those guys still would have been waiting."

They would have, yeah, but that wasn't the _point._ "I can handle trash like that. What I don't like is fucking Jude Heartfilia _threatening_ you with a drug charge. What I don't like is you getting involved. It wasn't supposed to happen." Zeref leaned forward and planted his elbows on his knees, his chin on his clutched fists, steeling himself for what he needed to do next. It felt like laying out a mousetrap and inching his fingers towards the mechanism. "I've been thinking. Maybe you should call Mom."

Natsu screwed up his face. "Why the hell would I call Mom?"

"Ask her if you can move back home. Get out of here for a little bit. Let things cool down."

"Is Dad still there?"

"I think so."

"Then no."

"Natsu—"

Natsu cut him off. "Are you kicking me out?"

He _should_. That's what a responsible, unselfish brother would do. A brother that didn't need Natsu to show him how to be human. "No."

"Then drop it."

Zeref rubbed his palms on his jeans, trying to centre himself _in this room_. Trying to think things through. Natsu wouldn't leave. Things needed to change, though. _And it starts with you, Zeref_ , Doctor Raquel said. "If you're going to stay here then I'll try to go legit."

"Legit?" Natsu repeated.

He'd keep going to the methadone clinic, he meant, though he wouldn't say it. "I'll try to get a job. A good one. Get this shit out of the house." He grabbed a stray pipe and dropped it dispassionately to the table. "I don't want to give anyone any reason to come down on you. Not for this."

Natsu smiled briefly. It went away again when Zeref asked, "What are you going to do?"

"About _what_?"

"I know Heartfilia told you to stop seeing Lucy."

Natsu immediately got defensive. "And how the fuck would you know that?"

"Because I asked him what it was going to take to get this charge put away."

"And he told you?"

"Seemed kind of proud to, actually." Puffing up his chest and explaining about _class_ and _his girl_ and _nobodies like your brother_ _sullying the Heartfilia name_.

"Natsu." Zeref waited until Natsu was looking at him. His glower was fierce and his thoughts were easily discerned. "Don't think you can go behind his back and keep seeing her. It's all or nothing for guys like him. Either you tell him to fuck his hat and get slapped with this charge or you do what he says."

Natsu's shoulders fell. "What do you think I should do?"

Gut Jude Heartfilia and leave his entrails scattered through the street. Beat his head in until it was pulp and smear it all over his fancy Lincoln. Shove pills in his mouth until he puked them all back up then slit his throat and rub his face in the mess.

Zeref sifted through the violence for the right words. "I want you to go to school. I want you to get a good job. I want you to have a house. A good one, that you buy _legally_."

"So you think I should cut ties with her."

"Yeah. I do."

"Because she'll always be Law School Lucy."

Basically. "Yeah."

Natsu stood, abandoning his pancakes.

"Where are you going?"

"Out."

Probably to do exactly what Jude Heartfilia didn't _want_ him to do. Zeref opened his mouth to tell Natsu to be smart but no words came out. Natsu wasn't going to listen; he loved Lucy. He'd bowl on ahead until a collision forced him to stop, as he'd done for his entire life. Zeref was afraid that this time the crash would be fatal.

The door opened and he was gone, and so was the moment. Zeref picked at his drippy pancake, thinking of ways to make this better. It started with him, he thought and eventually, when he gave up trying to eat, he started cleaning, Top to bottom. He threw out bongs and pipes and glass tubes and a Ziploc bag full of pot someone would shank him for. Half of an eight ball he'd rather put up his nose. Everything.

He opened the windows and sprayed air freshener and could almost pretend that the tar from years of cigarettes and joints hadn't soaked into the drywall and made everything perpetually stink.

Sometime around five, someone knocked on the door. He twitched aside the bedsheet and saw blonde and waffled between opening the door and letting the sheet fall back again, though Lucy absolutely knew he'd seen her.

Several long seconds passed in which she looked at him and he looked at her, wondering what it was about her that made getting beaten in the streets _worth_ it to Natsu. She was pretty, he guessed, and she went to a good school, so she was probably smart. She was so squeaky clean, though. She made him uncomfortable.

He opened the door. "Lucy."

The very tip of her nose was red and she was swaddled in a thick wool scarf that probably cost more than Zeref paid Invel a month for rent. "Hi, Zeref. Can I see Natsu?"

"No."

Lucy looked like he'd slapped her. "I just want to make sure he's okay. I heard he was in another fight and," she checked both ways down the street before whispering, "arrested," like that was the filthiest word she could think of.

"He's not here," Zeref clarified.

"Where did he go?"

The responsible thing to do would be to tell her he didn't know. Or to tell her to stay the fuck away. It just seemed like a lot of fucking effort. "Natsu has two places he goes when he needs to think."

"The park and Kardia," Lucy supplied. She looked up at the sky; it was dark already and the stars were diamonds sewn into a velvet tapestry. She came to the same conclusion he had: Natsu would be at the park, staring up at dust clouds and suns millions of years dead. "Thanks, Zeref."

He watched her until he could see her no longer. An Audi SUV rolled by and he shared a look with Jellal Fernandez, Lucy Heartfilia's first cousin. _Trouble_ his expression said, trouble was coming the Dragneels' way.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've updated the warnings to include underage content. This is a pseudo lie. It's a brushing thereof, but I thought it necessary to mention it. I don't condone underage anything.

A thousand nights once succoured me  
In the shadow of misanthropy

* * *

There was a girl that worked at the clinic on Tuesdays and Fridays. Mavis, her boss called her when he was scolding her for asking too many questions or for getting a prescription wrong. Every time it came for him to check her work, her eyes would go wide and glisten and her lip would pop out.

The first time she brought Zeref's methadone in its paper cup and waited for him to sign his name on the witness list, she smiled and something strange happened; his palms didn't burn so much and he didn't feel like ripping his fucking skin off. The change of state was so startling, he struggled to recreate the reaction. It only ever worked when she was nearby.

He started looking forward to his pharmacy visits.

Weeks slipped by. He talked to her a little more each time and even tried regurgitating a joke to make her laugh. It worked. He didn't feel like he normally did when he duped people into thinking he was one of them, though. He actually _felt_ like he could be the same.

Barely.

He tried to have a joke ready every time he went and she tried to be the one up at the counter.

Then one evening, Zeref ran into her outside the grocery store, after the sun had set and the sky was heavy with snow clouds. A few flakes drifted through the air. Zeref asked her only, "Did you want to go to the river?" and Mavis nodded. He didn't know why people just did that sometimes, trailed after like lemmings. He understood only that it gave him a kind of power over them.

When he looked in Mavis' eyes, he saw she was a good person who believed in other good people doing good things for good reasons. And he was one of them, in her eyes. Even though she worked at a methadone dispensary. Even though she knew he was a patient. The only thing she saw was that he was there trying to get off whatever he'd been hooked on and she was there for that.

She shimmied up onto the railing between the river and the green space and kicked her feet slowly. She could slip and fall and crack her head open on the rocks at the bottom of the waterfall. She could slide beneath the ice flow and not even be found in the spring. Zeref couldn't tell if that made him anxious or not. It was _supposed_ to.

He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. It was the only bit of vice he'd allowed himself in weeks. "Smoke?"

"No." She shook her head. The wind blew by, brisk and full of snowflakes. Some stuck to her golden lashes, some stuck in her long, golden hair. She leaned back almost over the water and said, "I hope it really, really snows. I like the winter."

He did, too, in a way. He could hide his face behind sunglasses and tuck into hoods. He could stay inside and turn people away from his front stoop. He could get by without too much temptation. Warm weather always made him crave all the things he shouldn't. He didn't know how to convey any of that, though.

Zeref finished his cigarette and started another before Mavis spoke again. "You're not like the other people that come to the clinic, you know."

"I'm not like anyone," he said absently, thinking about the negative space in his chest, his gun and the surety that one day, he was going to burn himself to the ground just because.

She looked at him and he again caught glimpse of a girl that wanted to save him. The lie: that he could be. The bigger lie: he _wanted_ to be. He told it to himself over and over again so it almost seemed like a real thing.

They met every day after that, whether it was snowing or not. Sometimes, it was so cold, Zeref's fingers would be numb and he couldn't feel his cigarette anymore. Mavis started hooking her feet between the railings and inviting him to stand close to her. She was always cold like Zeref and Winter were sucking all the heat out of her.

She kissed him the third time they stood like that and it felt like he was brushing by something good. He'd always destroyed good things. Pushed them away because he didn't understand them, so they could fall, fall, fall to the rocks at the bottom of the river, get swept up by the cold water and disappear forever.

It didn't _have_ to be that way, though, just because he had a hard time connecting on an emotional level. Feeling a thing was just as simple as _believing_ you felt a thing. That was the philosophy he'd lived by for his entire life, anyway. So what if it didn't fool his mom? It was good enough to fool a girl like Mavis, who believed in Good People. Who seemingly believed in him.

"Will you walk me to school tomorrow?" Mavis asked when they finally broke apart and it was time to leave.

"How about I drive you?" he suggested. It was a long way to walk

"Alright." She gave him the address to a little house on the east side of Magnolia, by the river. It was nice. A light blue bungalow with a two-car driveway and fresh paint on its exterior. Real, and _clean_ drapes in the windows. A happy golden retriever sitting in the windowsill. It was the kind of place Zeref had never lived in but thought about sometimes.

Mavis was waiting on the porch in a dark green skirt, a white button-up shirt. The patch over her left breast said _SABERS._ The word niggled at him while he drove. He didn't know why, though, until three minutes later when Mavis told him, "You should have gone left at the lights, not straight." Towards the high school. Not the college. It took a few moments after that, but eventually, he looked at her turquoise eyes and her round cheeks. At all of her. All of her in her entirety, her narrow hips and her flat chest. What he'd originally thought of as _slight._ Her innocent smile. His thoughts all jumbled up together. "How old are you?"

She hesitated and he knew it was bad.

"Mavis. How fucking old are you?"

"I'm turning sixteen soon," she said sheepishly.

She was fifteen _. Fifteen._ She couldn't even get her license. He rubbed her kiss from his lips. It wasn't enough. "What the fuck?"

"What does it matter?"

"It fucking _matters._ " It mattered a whole lot.

"Not to me, it doesn't."

"To everyone else in the goddamn world." The real horror. "I _kissed_ you."

"I _wanted_ you to."

Who cared if she wanted him to or not? Not the law. Not him. "Fuck. Why the _fuck_ didn't you say something?"

Her cheeks flushed and her eyes watered up. "I thought you knew."

"How would I possibly _know_?" He felt like he needed to go home and sear every thought from his head that ever contained _Mavis._

"Because I'm doing my community service at the pharmacy!"

Of course, she was. He cranked the wheel, pulling them into the high school's very furthest parking lot, away from everyone else. With any luck, no one would spot him. "Get out."

"Can't we talk about this?"

"Get _out_."

"Zeref—"

He dropped his sheep's clothes and stopped pretending to be like the rest of the world. "Get. Out."

Fear darted across her face. She pushed open the door and all but fell out. Her hair was tangled by the wind and her feet slipped in the snow. He could only see her back but he knew she was crying, she kept lifting her hand to wipe her cheeks. Zeref squeezed the wheel hard, making his knuckles crescent moons. "Fuck," he said again and dropped the transmission into drive.

* * *

He stopped going to the clinic because he didn't want to see her. The next closest one was two towns over, two and a half hours of driving. So he tried to go cold turkey and lay in his bathtub, shaking and sweating and vomiting.

Natsu wasn't home. For days and days. Zeref texted him when he thought to. Sometimes, Natsu responded. He was at Erik's. He was with Ultear. Both sounded terrible but when Zeref asked him to come home, Natsu ignored him. Truth be told, Zeref wasn't keen to have his brother see him as he was, anyway. So he told Natsu to use condoms and then returned to his suffering.

It got so bad, Zeref thought he was going to die. He _wanted_ to die. He filled up the bathtub and put on his first record, Led Zeppelin, and listened to _I Can't Quit You Baby_ while he stared at the cracks in the tile. They ran like the veins of his body, five jagged lines converging into one large one.

What if he _couldn't_ quit, he wondered? What if he just wandered around husked the fuck out, dead air inside his head, pretending to be okay? What if his transmission just kept slipping gears and nothing ever caught? What if. What if. What if.

He couldn't go on like that. He hated the way he shivered when the water was scalding hot and sweated when it got cold. He hated the fuddled feeling in his head. The one that confused him all the time. That tricked him into thinking Mavis was something other than what she was. A light. _Hope._ He hated that when he lay in the dark and he was on the edge of sleep, she crept into his thoughts, unbidden, even after he knew the truth.

He fumbled for his pants. For the knife in his pocket. Water sloshed over the edge of the tub, soaking the floor and his discarded clothes. His heart was a jackhammer in his chest. Where was the calm he felt when he held his gun and put it to his temple? Gone. All gone. Because when he put just one bullet inside and spun the cylinder, there was only a one in six chance he was landing on the bullet.

Knives were forever.

_No more pretending_ , Zeref thought, pressing it into his skin. It split it like butter and blood bubbled up. Movies made you think it was a bright red fresh out of the body but in reality, it was impossibly dark.

_No more wanting. No more nothing._ No more _anything_.

Something loud buzzed, startling him so badly, the knife slipped, splitting his skin more. But shallow. Blood dropped in the tub, a plume that disintegrated but left behind a red the colour of roses.

Another buzz. Zeref looked over the edge of the tub. His phone had fallen out of his pocket. It walked across the tiles, warbling in the water. It was Erik. He'd called twice and had sent Zeref several texts. The latest was a picture of Natsu on Erik's couch with Brandish and Ultear, sucking on a stubby pipe. His eyes were like two panes of glass, unfocused and shiny and large.

_You know I'm on probation. I can't have this shit in here. I'm throwing them out and he's too fucked up to walk home,_ was the next text Erik sent.

"Fuck me." Zeref threw his phone back down on his pants and got moving. His arm was still bleeding heavily. He dried and packed it with toilet paper, bits sticking to his skin, and wrapped it all up with scotch tape. He wore a sweater to hide the mess but was already concocting a believable story. He doubted anyone would ask, though. Natsu was fucked up in his own head and Zeref didn't really have anyone else.

* * *

Erik lived in a section of Magnolia the locals had dubbed 'The Patch'. It was all government housing, meaning Erik's looked just like the rest, a townhouse attached to a line of them. His porch was a concrete stairway with a slab at the top, his door was steel, scratched down through the paint. Over the years, it had been graffitied it with numerous things, crude art, crude sayings, each more unsavoury than the last.

Zeref knocked over a stick man with dull black eyes and a moment later, the door opened; Erik was there, eyes red-rimmed, mouth flat and serious. Voices poured into the night, people laughing and talking, music. Smoke chased them. Heroin, cigarette, weed. The monster in Zeref's chest reared up and lapped at it hungrily. Black spots appeared in front of his eyes and he thought he was going to pass out. He grabbed the door frame and held it tightly, breathing shallowly, thinking, _it's okay._ _It's okay,_ and when that didn't work, _it's not okay and that's okay._

"He's here," said Erik and hiked his thumb over his shoulder, to the couch. Natsu was flat on his back. Ultear was pulling his boxers up for him. Her eyes flitted up briefly, met Zeref's, and dropped again. Shame. Guilt. Zeref knew those expressions like he knew his face in the mirror. He'd practiced them religiously. He didn't _care_. He didn't care about anything except the spaced-out expression on Natsu's face. He'd do anything to feel half as dazed as Natsu looked.

Zeref took another shallow breath and wheezed out the proper words. "Thanks. And thanks for calling."

Natsu tilted his head back slowly. Recognition but not understanding flitted across his face when their eyes met. Someone had hit him not very long ago. His lip was busted and a faded brown bruise ringed his eye.

"Who tuned him up?"

"He wouldn't say," Erik replied.

Which meant it was another one of Heartfilia's ploys. How many beatings could Natsu take for Lucy? He was so stubborn. It was admirable, really, but it wasn't like one day, Jude was going to roll over and think, _Natsu's good enough for my daughter today_. Tragedy waited at the end of this route.

Someone lit another bong and the smoke hazed out the entire room. Zeref kept his shoes on inside the house, though he dragged in snow. He needed to get out of there as soon as possible.

"Hey, Zeref," Ultear mumbled from the couch. She was smooshed between Natsu and the backrest and couldn't seem to get herself out.

"Move please." He wasn't there for niceties.

Ultear struggled until Zeref grabbed her bicep and helped her up. Brandish was just as dexterous, sliding off the couch and onto the floor. Natsu shivered as soon as their body heat was gone. His eyes fluttered, then rolled into the back of his head and he fell into the shakes Zeref knew all too well. He tapped Natsu's cheek to keep him in the present. "We're going home. Come on."

He just laid there, quivering. Zeref crouched and put his arm around Natsu's back and got his feet under him. His pants slid down. Zeref caught them before it was disastrous. "Hold them up."

Natsu obeyed his orders without complaint.

Erik was still by the door when they got there. Zeref said, "Get his shoes."

"Here." Erik put them down in front of Natsu's feet and joked with his other guests at Natsu's expense. Zeref couldn't focus on what he said, though, he was split between wicked withdrawal and watching that Natsu didn't fall on his face as he forced his feet into his boots. He put Natsu's coat on for him when they were finally ready and ripped open the door. The Dakota looked like a godsend, running in the driveway.

Zeref put Natsu in the passenger's seat and undid the window in case of accidents. Natsu tried to do it back up once they got going. Zeref reached over and swatted his hands away.

"You'll want it down."

"It's cold," Natsu muttered.

"Well, _I'll_ want it down."

His point was proven not thirty seconds later when Natsu leaned his head out and retched.

He wasn't any more cognizant by the time they got home. Zeref brought him into the bathroom and put him down on the ground beside the toilet, then checked under the sink. There was a Naloxone kit in a black fabric bag. He pulled it out, broke the seal and put it on the edge of the bathtub.

The bathroom was too small for them both to fit in comfortably, but Natsu needed to be watched and there was no fucking way he was going to make it in here from his room if he needed to be sick, so Zeref returned to the bathtub. The bottom was still damp. He slouched in it and sighed, looking at his brother's shivering form. He wasn't supposed to be the one smoking heroin in government housing with people that didn't give any fucks about him. He was the better of them.

Zeref's phone was going off. He checked it. It was his mother, and she wanted to meet tomorrow morning. _911_ , she texted, and it must have been because it was two in the morning; she never messaged him so late.

Natsu lifted himself up and retched noisily into the toilet. Zeref set his alarm for six. It was going to be a long night.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Mother's come, she is the night

* * *

The restaurant stunk in the best way. Coffee and bacon. It was a welcomed reprieve from the bile Zeref had been smelling all the night before. He tucked his nose in his chipped mug and felt the clouds at least stir in his foggy mind. He still didn't feel smart enough to outwit his mother, though. two hours of interrupted sleep just wouldn't do it.

The bell over the door jingled and in walked the lady of the hour. She looked a lot like Natsu in a lot of ways. Both of them had dark eyes and high cheekbones, both of them shared a similar complexion of skin. And both of them looked like they come out on the losing end of a brawl. Her hair was tangled and her shirt was only half tucked into a pair of jeans. The Dragneels had never been very organized but it seemed like they were taking more than their share of hits recently.

She spotted him immediately and didn't have a smile in reserve as she usually did. The ominous feeling he'd experienced last night only grew. When she came to sit across from him, he noticed a slight discolouration on her jawline. He focused in on it, cool all over, not really shocked, not really outraged. He was _always_ cool all over. At least it was something he could depend on.

"What happened?"

Her hand fluttered up around the bruise and dropped again without response. This was the easy way. He didn't have to search out how to feel if he didn't have the truth.

A waitress came over with coffee. Zeref watched his mother pour three generous helpings of sugar into her cup and four milks. He waited for her to take a sip, then he waited for her to speak.

"You look tired," she said only after she was a quarter way through her cup. Her voice was hoarse from screaming. How many plates were broken? Computers, TVs, tables, for that matter? All of it? Was the whole fucking house just one giant fucking warzone? Sometimes, he missed the din of their fights. He missed being the _object_ of their fights. They were arguing over how fucked up he was, _yeah_ , but at least they weren't ignoring him until he could do something for them.

That revelation sat on his chest like a heavy brick. "I've been up all night," Zeref squeezed out. "So why don't you cut the bullshit and tell me what was a nine-one-one?"

Her mouth went tight and flint flickered in her eyes. Then she set down her cup, seemingly resigned. "We're going to lose the house."

"Of course." That was _also_ something he could depend on _._ "Taxes again?"

"Mortgage. We're behind."

"He's gambling again," Zeref stated. He used to think him and his old man had nothing in common. How disappointing to find root in his addiction.

"I have pamphlets." She opened her purse and took out three booklets on gambling and breaking the habit. The pages were bent and stained. She'd been carrying them around for days, obviously. Maybe weeks. Fuck. Maybe since the last time he'd really gone off the rails.

_So where are my pamphlets_? asked an unfamiliar voice. _Are there ones in her bag for drugs, too?_ There weren't. He knew it. His mother was predictable in that way. Self-absorbed. She probably didn't notice his twitching, his sharp cheekbones or his slightly green pallor because it didn't really affect her day-to-day.

Zeref was suddenly angry. "I can't keep doing this, Mom."

"I know, baby. I'm sorry." Her eyes filled with tears. Zeref watched them stream down her face, feeling a little bit dead and wondering what he should do. How he should move his face. Should he reach for her? He did, seething in anger and everything, because that's what people _did_ , stretching his hand across the table and weaving his fingers with hers. It was awkward and insincere all around, but she clutched him and cried harder and he knew he was trapped. He _was_ going to try to get her that money. He was. And there was one way he knew would always work.

* * *

Zeref didn't have Angel's number, he'd deleted it from his phone in an attempt to step back, but he never had to look very hard for her. He just followed the line of glassy-eyed men she always seemed to leave behind.

Tonight, that led him to a party at one Sting Eucliffe's house. He couldn't get out of the house without alerting Natsu, though, and Natsu wouldn't let him leave without him. So Natsu sat in the passenger's seat and Zeref drove down a country laneway, past walking revellers all funneling towards a party everyone would feel listless at but would pretend was fun because culture _demanded_ it.

Natsu was quite possibly the party's first victim, looking out the passenger's window, lifeless. Because of that, he didn't see Lucy walking down the driver's side of the road with everyone else, beside a man with red hair. Zeref determined he wasn't going to tell him, either. It was difficult to say how in over his head Natsu was with everything that was going on in his life, mostly because Zeref didn't ask. He didn't know _how_ to. He knew one thing, though. The best way to shake an addiction was to stay the fuck away from it. Lucy Heartfilia was Natsu's addiction, and tonight, he'd be brushing up against it if he wasn't careful.

"You need to stay out of the house," Zeref said as he turned the truck off the main road and onto a dirt one that was deserted. Being off the beaten path would make a hasty getaway possible. Through the swaying trees, Zeref spied a fire. It was just starting to sputter in the backyard, by the expansive forest. There were a hundred bodies around it, at least. Plenty of people to distract his brother.

"Why?"

"Because if the cops raid, that's the first place they're going to look," Zeref lied. Girls like Lucy wouldn't spend a ton of time partying out in the cold by the smoky fire when she could be inside, dancing and drinking with the rest of the girls just like her.

Natsu nodded like Zeref was a sage and opened his door, eager to meld in with the nightlife. Zeref took longer, getting a cigarette out, and shotgunning a beer, convincing himself that _this_ was better than doing lines or popping pills. _You're here for a purpose. Just find Angel. Talk to Angel. Make a deal with Angel. Get the fuck out. Without Angel._

He got another beer, this one to sip, and got to it. Cool air wrapped him up and crept through his jacket. Natsu was gone, blended in with the crowd by the fire. Zeref hovered around the edge, watching people laugh and scream joyfully. Falsely. Tonight, everyone was just like him, pretending.

Someone just steps away was smoking a joint and that wasn't bad, it was the people behind _them_ that were talking about scoring Molly that Zeref was concerned with. A chill went through him that had nothing to do with the weather.

_Angel. You need to find Angel._ And he couldn't do that sitting still. Zeref stepped away from the fringes and into the firelight. Some eyes drifted his way, some people looking confused. He'd been out of the scene for a little while now. But if that was _really_ true, how come he didn't feel out of place? _This life will always be for you_ , he thought dully. _And you for it._ Because tigers couldn't change their stripes and other such over-used nonsense.

_So why not stop pretending? When you find Angel, just ask her for a pick-me-up._ Just a small one. He'd been so good lately.

Zeref chewed his cheek until he tasted iron. He needed to _focus_. He finished his beer and grabbed another from the keg. It'd been weeks since he'd drunk anything and his head was spinning already but it was welcomed. It was almost like getting a fix. Once he thought of it like that, the monster in his chest settled and he could think. He could _hunt_. And he didn't have to hunt very far. Angel was sitting across the fire, laughing at something someone said to her. Her voice was clear as a bell and made Zeref think of his dark bedroom, his revolver, and the emptiness of every bullet slot except _one_. And that one's potential.

Angel's eyes came up and locked on his like she felt him studying her. Her smile fell away. Something passed between them, and it was sure to be ugly and it was sure to be terrible. It was sure to ruin him, one day. There was peace in certainty, though, wasn't there?

Angel left the log she'd been using as a stool and came to him. Her arm fit in his. She smiled. She hadn't expected him to turn her down and he _wouldn't_.

_Just get what you need. Get what you need and get out._

Girls like Angel, though. They took everything, and what was left after that, too.

More eyes followed Zeref as they exited the ring of partiers around the fire. These ones weren't just curious, though. He spotted Ultear sitting next to Natsu. She was glowering at him and Angel fiercely. She wouldn't understand why he told her to leave him alone but then went back to Angel, and he wasn't in the mood to tell her, either.

Ultear's glower got more severe. She turned to Natsu, grabbed his face in both of her hands, and kissed him _hard._ Zeref left his brother to navigate that bear trap. It was probably safer than the one that surely waited for him up at the house.

Angel brought him away from the forest and into the backyard. There was a party going on in the hot tub, Zeref saw as they passed. He recognized Sting and Rogue and Brandish. They were smoking something stronger than weed. Zeref breathed deeply and pretended like he wasn't, but Angel missed nothing.

"How long have you been clean for?"

"A couple weeks." It didn't feel like a huge accomplishment when he was at home, considering his knife in his bathtub, or sitting beside his mother in a breakfast place, listening to her woes. It felt even more insignificant and useless now, standing beneath a lambent moon, the smell of heroin all around him, and Angel. Angel, whose purse was probably heavy with the perks she stole from the hospital. The pharmacist there _must_ have been getting a cut from her side hustle. How else did she get so many narcs off the premises?

She said nothing. Zeref didn't know what she was thinking. _Good_ , perhaps, but she would never say it, because the Zeref that needed her was the addict, and Angel desperately needed to be needed.

"So? What do you want from me?"

"I need money." There wasn't any delicate way to say it. "A lot."

Angel laughed. "I don't _have_ a lot of money to just give away."

"But you could get product. I can help you move it. I know everyone." The junkies on and off their binges, the ballers looking to score a couple of times a month. He _knew_ them. Better than Angel did. She knew it, too. She put on a stubborn face, though, crossing her arms.

"The last time you got involved, your brother was arrested and you told me to fuck off, remember?"

"My memory is fine," Zeref said. "I just need this. Natsu's not involved."

"Are you sorry?" She was still smiling, still enjoying the game. Zeref was _not._ He only stared at her. He wouldn't give her what she wanted. She was the most accessible supply he had and the most malleable one, but she wasn't the _only_ person he could turn to.

Angel sighed hugely and put her arms around his neck. She did things like this so easily, leaned into him, touched him like his fucked up head didn't bother her. He might have been fucking crazy, but she would still call him baby. It reminded Zeref of Mavis, which reminded him of how careless he'd been when he was coming down.

" _Fine_ ," Angel said. Her lips whispered over his, bubble gum lip gloss. "I won't make you say sorry. I know you mean it, anyway."

There was nothing slight about Angel, Zeref recalled, touching her and leaning into her kiss. There was nothing shy, there was nothing sweet.

People moved over the front yard, going towards the house. Moonlight reflected off Natsu's pink hair. Ultear was beside him. That didn't mean anything, though. He would drop her as soon as he saw Lucy. He dropped _everything_ as soon as he saw Lucy.

"Did you want to do a bump?" Angel breathed into him.

He would have definitely said yes then if he didn't have something else to focus on. He threw himself at figuring out how to get Natsu out of the house, away from Lucy. From disaster. "Maybe later. I have something I have to do right now."

"What?" Angel looked confused.

"Come by the apartment tomorrow," Zeref told her. He backed away as he spoke. Angel appeared frustrated _and_ intrigued.

"Okay."

The fire was much larger now, someone had built a pyre. Inspired, Zeref went to his truck for camp fuel, a lighter and his cell phone. He returned to the now-empty backyard to first make a massive fire, then call the police with an anonymous complaint about it. The whole ordeal took a solid twenty minutes, his matches kept going out in the growing wind. He was nothing if not persistent.

Finally, the fire caught in the dead, dry grass and raced towards the forest. Zeref returned to the house and spotted just person he wanted to see. Loke, the man Lucy had arrived with, was sitting on a large boulder at the side of the Eucliffe property, smoking a cigarette and looking at the moon. Zeref put the camp fuel back in his pocket before approaching.

"Hey."

Loke looked up. He was still wearing sunglasses, though the sun had sunk hours ago. "Hi?"

"I just heard on my scanner, the pigs are coming," Zeref said.

Predictably, Loke dropped his cigarette and hopped to his feet. Zeref watched him enter the house through the front door. Zeref went around the side, past the hot tub. Ultear was sitting on the edge, naked. There were limbs everywhere, steam.

"Cops," Zeref called to her. She swore and rushed to get dressed without asking questions. Zeref continued into the house. He didn't have to go far to find Natsu. He had Lucy against a counter in the dark and abandoned kitchen just inside the doors. Lucy was down to her bra and trying desperately to get Natsu to undress. Both were so involved, neither seemed to notice him. Zeref spoke up. They were running out of time.

"We gotta go, Natsu."

Natsu swore under his breath and tried to use his body to hide Lucy's. He wasn't sober, though; his efforts were wobbly at best. "Give me a minute."

They didn't _have_ a minute. Zeref could hear the sirens. "No. We have to go now."

"I'm _busy_." Digging his own grave with Lucy Heartfilia, the prettiest shovel Zeref had ever seen.

He embellished his lie to get his brother moving. "Gildarts just called me. Someone called in a complaint because some asshole made a huge fire in the field. You don't have a minute to be _busy_ no matter how fast you are."

It still took Natsu some time to catch on. "The cops are coming to check it out?"

"Yeah."

Natsu pulled away from Lucy. He'd forgotten about her state of undress. "Do you have a ride home?"

Zeref stepped in again. "A guy named Loke brought her. I already found him and told him what's going on."

Lucy's usually sunny expression got cloudy. "What, are you spying on me?"

"No. Everyone saw you come in, everyone knows Loke and his big mouth and _I_ know that you'd never leave otherwise." He couldn't resist the last. His brother swam in Lucy's bad decisions like he wanted to drown.

_Finally,_ the door into the main part of the house opened and Loke entered, frazzled and moving fast. "Lucy? We gotta split. No time to get decent." He took off his sport coat and put it around Lucy's shoulders, drawing a deep frown from Natsu. That was what jealousy looked like. Zeref had seen it a lot between Angel and Ultear, but he never imagined his brother would be prone to it, too.

"Wait," Lucy protested as Loke shoved her between her shoulder blades. "Just hang on a second!"

Natsu stepped forward like he was going to intervene. Zeref grabbed his shirt sleeve. "Now."

Lucy complained all the way out of the kitchen. She was apparently easier to bully than a fully-grown Natsu. Natsu fought against Zeref's grip until Zeref shook him violently. " _Enough_."

Natsu's eyes cleared and got wide. He heard the screaming sirens and let Zeref take him out, over the now-empty deck, across the field lousy with fleeing bodies, and into the waiting Dakota. They took the back way and avoided a scene, just like Zeref planned.

It was silent in the cab until they were nearly home, then Natsu turned to him and said, "You knew she was going to be there. That's why you told me not to go up to the house. It wasn't about the cops at all, was it?"

Of all the lies Natsu could have picked apart, this was the least damaging. "I thought you might have gone looking for her if you knew." No question about it. A few beers could make even the worst decision seem like the best. He had proof. Angel was still in his head, her smile, her kiss, the memory of her drugs.

Zeref sighed and stole a look at his brother. Natsu smelled like Lucy's perfume. He had a dazed look in his eye. For the longest time, Zeref thought he was the only one of them that was sick, but just then, Natsu looked like he lived for the damage.

* * *

Angel rolled into Zeref's apartment around one-thirty the next day. She looked put together, but then again, she _always_ did, her hair curled and her eyes looking hazy blue, like smoke in the sky. She took off her coat and draped it over the clean couch. The first blemish she left in his life. She opened up her compact case, showing off a tidy pile of cocaine, Zeref's drug of choice. The second.

She didn't speak as she moved to his kitchen table and upended the compact on the scarred lacquer. Zeref couldn't, either. He couldn't tell her to get out, he couldn't tell her to stop. He could only watch her organize two neat lines, one for her and one, predictably, for him, and feel the chasm in his chest gape. He wished Natsu would stop moping and get out of bed. He wished he could _call_ him. But Natsu had gotten up once around ten to piss and had locked himself in his room again, thinking about Lucy, likely, and Zeref could only stand in his kitchen, airless and helpless.

Angel snorted all of one line back and pinched her nose. It must have hurt. Zeref wanted to feel that burn. He wanted to feel it so badly, he could die. He dug his fingers into the cut he'd made on his arm but that didn't seem to help clear his head.

His phone buzzed across the table, the screen lighting up with a picture of his mother on the swing at the back of their family home. There were grey skies behind her. There always was.

_You belong to this life,_ Zeref thought as Angel tipped the straw toward him. She smiled; she already knew what he was going to do, probably better than he did.

Zeref's phone stopped ringing and immediately started again. He put it on Do Not Disturb and sat down across from Angel. His nose burned worse than he remembered. Angel let him absorb that for a moment, let the seething monster he'd been ineffectually soothing calm, before sidling over into his lap. She was the third blemish in his life, he _knew_ that. Just then, he couldn't remember why he tried to bleach her out, though.


	6. Chapter 6

Up all night on another white

* * *

Rain pelted the window relentlessly. With his head back and through a fringe of dark hair, Zeref watched the drops sluice down toward the frame, secretly wishing he could be one of them, sliding anonymously towards freedom.

It was hard to believe that _anything_ existed beyond his room and the rain, but a car honked out in the street and someone yelled, sounds of life. Zeref made himself look around. Everything was muzzy. He had no idea which day of the week it was, whose rose-coloured bong that was on his table, or why the window was fractured. The rain kept slowing on the uneven ledge before getting caught, once more, in the inertia.

His bedroom door opened. Angel was there. She looked a bit thinner, perhaps, her underwear sitting a bit too loose on her hips, her breastbone protruding. Somehow, she was still beautiful, like a knife blade finely honed.

She just needed a bit of polish.

He did, too.

Angel climbed over him on the bed to get to between him and the wall and collapsed beside him. her hair was damp. She'd showered, then.

Angel rested her head on his chest and looked up at him with the big blue eyes other girls would use to get their way if they could. Angel relied on other weapons, not nearly a quarter as sweet. Her hands were cold on his chest, drawing small circles.

"I work tomorrow."

"Okay." That didn't tell him which day of the week it was or how much time had passed, lost in this haze.

"I can get some more narcs. Maybe oxies. Or hydromorphone."

His deep-seated wanting was almost bowled over by his repulsion. It was a close call. He did not relish this slave-like behaviour when anyone mentioned an opioid and yet, he could scarcely think about anything other than how, precisely, he was going to get his next fix.

He was in trouble. Maybe more than when he'd first started his methadone treatment.

Those thoughts brought him to Mavis, which drove him back to Angel, which drove him to the brink of madness.

Angel moved steadily down toward his cock and he didn't know if he was ready to do this. He was all pent-up energy and irritation and soreness if he was honest. Every part of him felt like it'd walked fifteen kilometres after a bad car accident and somehow, he wanted to walk it again before he laid down and died.

Something buzzed. He put his head back again, just as Angel reached her destination. His phone was on the bedside table and its face was lit up. Ultear, texting him that'd it'd been seven days since he'd left his apartment. She was careful not to be too familiar with him. She was still mad, then. Though not mad enough to leave him to rot in his bed for his brother to find if he'd died. Wasn't she sweet? Except, he imagined her thoughtfulness had more to do with Natsu than with him.

Zeref grabbed the phone and typed out a clumsy message.

Angel sat up so she could grab his cock more firmly. The soreness was fading into the background. He dropped his phone back to the bedside and in doing so, found the source of his mania. Coke. Where had it come from and how much was there originally? Because right now, there was only a fine powder dusting his nightstand and his veins felt like they'd been used to run pure gasoline.

"Who was that?" Angel asked, again looking at him between her lashes.

"Ultear."

Angel's lips tightened minutely. Most people wouldn't have noticed, but Zeref studied everything. Always. Sometimes, he wondered what it would be like to turn that part of him off. Would he be more like everyone else then, or would he be even more of a fraud?

Angel saved voicing her opinion on the matter. She reserved that for her actions, sitting up straighter and taking her arms out of her tank top and rolling the material down around her waist. Her breasts were still heavy despite the weight she'd dropped.

Zeref's phone went off again. He looked back, though he knew it was Ultear and it would annoy Angel. Possibly _because_ it would annoy Angel.

Predictably, another pulse of annoyance went through her. Not even because Ultear was texting him, but because he was looking at it while she was there, taking off her clothes.

She leaned forward, putting her body on him more completely. Zeref expected her to come back with his phone but she'd found something even more precious. The cocaine on his nightstand. She slid her finger through and sucked it off. She did it again and brought it to Zeref's lips.

He hesitated, thinking about methadone Mavis and Angel. Methadone, Mavis and Angel.

"What is it?"

Her eyes were the same blue as storm clouds. They really were one of her best features. "Have you ever thought about not?"

"Not what?" She blinked, oblivious—or acting it. Angel wasn't stupid.

It was too much work to explain himself. Zeref opened his mouth without further response and let Angel put her damp finger inside. His tongue tingled as he sucked off every drop. He wished there was more. He wished there was none of it. And more than that, he wished he'd said nothing to Angel. She was looking at him the same way a cat looked at a mouse in its paws, deciding if it was worth eating or just killing. He hoped she'd leave him to fester on the floor.

No such luck. She kissed his neck and his chest, leaving a cooling line of saliva. Her breasts pushed against him and he couldn't help but like it. So what if he couldn't connect with her on an emotional level? Wasn't physical just as well?

He'd been filling that void for a long time, though, and knew it was not the same thing without knowing _why._

Angel's mouth made a tight and wet circle around his cock and it didn't matter anymore.

* * *

The sun was coming up again as Zeref was coming down, full of restless energy. Angel had—somehow—fallen asleep and breathed easily beside him. She was sprawled across him and it felt intimate and not only did he not understand it, but he also did not want it. He felt _confined._

Zeref disentangled their bodies and stood, naked, in the middle of his room, breathing heavily for no apparent reason, staring at Angel and imagining ways he could get her out of his apartment. The last thought would have landed him in a psych ward.

He breathed deeply in an attempt to relax. It wasn't working without something to focus on. He needed clothes. He needed to shower. He needed to eat and maybe that would help him patch his veneer.

There was a pair of boxer briefs on the floor—questionably clean, but he grabbed them and put them on and quietly closed the bedroom door behind himself.

The apartment was tomb-quiet. Zeref kept it that way, tiptoeing silently to Natsu's room. It was empty. Someone had left a condom package on his bed. Zeref doubted it was his brother. The apartment felt like it'd been absent of his presence for days.

He went through Natsu's clothes, digging out a pair of jeans and a Black Sabbath T-shirt. He didn't want to have to go back into his own room and chance waking Angel.

He showered. He brushed his hair. He even cleaned the bathroom a little. It was a mess. Hair and dirt and other smears he didn't have a name for. He couldn't clean it top to bottom, though. Every time he thought he was getting somewhere, he kept losing focus.

So he started on the kitchen. There were McDonald's cups with cigarette butts in them, pizza boxes, empties strewn around the counters. It looked like he'd thrown party after party but aside from flashes of memory here and there, laughter, music, skin, foggy smoke and drugs, Zeref couldn't recall a goddamn thing.

His phone jangled. It was his mother.

 _You were supposed to get her money,_ he recalled. _You promised._ And that was… _seven days ago,_ he remembered Ultear's text. Seven days had gone by, and if he'd sold Angel's drugs and made some money off of them, all he had to show for it was a full bed and a fucking disaster of an apartment.

 _I need to get out of here._ And he needed to fix this. And he needed to do it _without_ Angel because she was a fucking black hole with all of her drugs and her fucking blowjobs and her mean sighs that he liked almost as much as he liked cocaine.

He wanted to throw his phone and scream. Instead, he calmly slid the call to _Ignore_ and searched every inch of the apartment for something to sell. He found a tab of LSD someone had lost in the couch and a baggy of weed he'd put under the coffee table for safe-keeping. It wasn't opioids and wouldn't fetch him nearly enough, but he had to have _something_ to show for his efforts.

* * *

The sun was shining too brightly for Zeref's tastes. He hid behind his sunglasses and hunched in his leather jacket and wished he'd slept some before rushing out. He was exhausted _and_ he was tweaking, hunting in his pockets again and again for a package of cigarettes he'd never find because he didn't leave the apartment with them. But he couldn't seem to stop.

"You're making me nervous," said August from Zeref's side. He spoke lowly so a cotton top couple on their way by couldn't hear.

Zeref breathed deeply and made his shoulders roll back against the bench at the edge of the sidewalk. There was a goddamn bird that kept chirping in his ear, making him twitch and preventing him from actually relaxing, though.

August leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "When was the last time you slept?" He didn't look at Zeref as he spoke, watching the people going by, hunting for someone very specific.

"I don't know."

Silence, then, "You're going to kill yourself."

Imagine, not choosing when he died but overdosing like a fucking waste.

"You should slow down."

He _should_.

"Here."

A cigarette was thrust into his hand. Zeref searched his pockets again for a lighter. A shadow fell over him and August and a black zippo struck a flame. Zeref leaned forward without looking up, lighting his cherry.

Then his visitor spoke. "Where is your brother, Zeref?"

Zeref took his time breathing deeply and exhaling, though all of his nerves had needles in them. Finally, he felt together enough to meet Jellal Fernandez's eyes. "Off minding his own business." Or so he hoped.

"He wasn't last Saturday."

Zeref thought he should say something in Natsu's defence but the only thing he could think of was Natsu pushing Lucy against the counter, pawing at her like he was in high school again. Just then, he didn't feel like he'd missed out on anything, not ever connecting with anyone or being in love. It was just a big fucking catastrophe.

"The kid's trying to get his shit together, Fernandez," August cut in when Zeref was just blank. "He loves the girl. Is that so bad?"

"I don't call the shots, August, you know that."

"You're more than just your uncle's lackey," August continued. "Don't pretend otherwise."

The look Jellal gave him could have made a deer skin itself. _Trouble,_ Zeref thought again, _trouble is coming._ Jellal ignored August and focused on Zeref. "She's been sending him photos."

"Titty pictures?" August laughed. Jellal's fingers tightened into a fist, annoyed.

"Has he been reciprocating?" Zeref asked, eyes on Jellal's hands.

"He hasn't been telling her to stop." Which was just as bad in his eyes.

"I'll take care of it," Zeref said at last.

Jellal's shadow lingered for a moment more, then disappeared as he moved on into whatever hole he'd climbed out of. August cursed about him for a full minute. Zeref let his words roll over him, thinking about Natsu and Lucy and the trouble they were getting themselves into. She was going to get him killed. _He—_ Zeref—was going to get Natsu killed. Natsu deserved better people in his life.

August sat back and rubbed his palms over his jeans, seemingly at ease again. "So what have you got?"

Zeref pulled away from his thoughts. "What?"

"Don't you have something to sell?"

Oh. That.

Zeref looked either way down the street, ensuring that they were alone. No cars, no pedestrians. He took out his scavenged drugs and handed them over for August's inspection. August's nose curled and Zeref saw what he'd brought in a new light. An opened package of LSD and a dime bag of pot that looked pillaged.

"This is shit."

Zeref took it all back without complaint and sunk lower on the bench. They sat in silence for a little while, Zeref smoking his cigarette down to the very filter and August crowd-watching with a stony countenance.

Finally, August said, "I've got a job you might be able to help me with if you're looking for cash."

"What kind of job?"

"My buddy's shop needs parts."

The pieces fell into place. "You think I know how to lift cars?"

"You can't sell drugs; you can't lift cars. What the fuck _can_ you do, then?" August said with bark but not much bite.

More silence. Zeref searched his pockets again. August, the enabler, handed him his cigarettes once more.

"I can show you."

Zeref breathed out, thinking about his bedroom and the gun beneath his mattress and the knife and the bathtub and his phone ringing and the empty spot in his chest and his brother that was still MIA and all the things he _should_ be but wasn't. The good brother. The collected one. The things he'd pretended to be, day in and day out.

 _You pretend so much, what if you just pretended to be a car thief, as well?_ He wouldn't be good at it, of course, but he could fake it until he made it. And most importantly, cars didn't sell drugs.

"Okay."

"Here." August picked up a slate grey lockbox from his side and handed it over.

Like he was holding a viper, Zeref opened it cautiously and counted six amber bottles full of tang and methadone. His guts wrenched. He badly wanted to take them all at once. He'd probably be dead before he could think about standing, though. He cleared his throat. "Don't you need it?"

"Not as bad as you."

"What do you want for them?"

"This round's on me," August said.

"And the next?"

"We can talk about it when you're in a better place." August picked up one of the bottles and put it in Zeref's shaking hand. "Drink up, I can't fucking stand the way you're twitching."

He did, gladly. It settled in his empty stomach with a cold splash and moved through his limbs almost immediately. His chest unlocked and so did his mind. He could _think_. He could _see_ all of the things he hadn't been able to before. Like August. He was talking to Zeref but watching a boy come down the street on a scooter. His focus was so intent, he was like a hunter watching a grouse move through the underbrush.

The boy got a bit closer and Zeref realized that it wasn't actually a boy at all but a man, twenty-one, at least, though Zeref knew from their brief interactions at the pharmacy that he had the mental capacity of a child. He even knew his name. Toni.

While Zeref was waiting for his methadone, he would watch Toni stand in front of the candy shelves for long moments, moving back and forth like a half-buoyant balloon, though he would always choose the same thing—one-dollar M&M's. Then he would plant himself at the cash counter with his hand full of coins, held out for the cashier to count. She'd pick out what he'd need with mock patience while Toni smiled at nothing and everything, perhaps too dumb or too innocent to be dour.

"Are you waiting for him?"

"Sure am." August stood. He was grey and wrinkled as the gills of a mushroom but he was an opposing presence at his full height, especially when he was mad, as he was now.

August positioned himself directly in Toni's path and snagged him by the throat with little warning. Toni's scooter fell to the sidewalk, stubby wheels spinning madly. August bullied him down an alley. Zeref rose and followed without really thinking about why.

August slammed Toni against a brick wall, out of view of the street and looked him over in obvious disgust. Toni didn't make a noise for three long beats. Then he started to writhe and scream like a wounded animal. He was not smiling now.

"Shut up!" August frothed and Toni got silent again. For a moment.

Then, "What are you doing?" Toni's words were malformed and guileless. If Zeref was a different person, he might have felt sorry for him. Toni clearly understood the danger he was in but was ill-equipped to diffuse the situation.

"Teaching you a fucking lesson."

"I didn't do anything! Let me go! My scooter—" More writhing. Another breath-stealing slam into the wall.

"I saw you last night."

"I wasn't anywhere last night!" Toni squirmed weakly in August's grasp. There really was no hope of him escaping.

"Sure you were, boy. I told you not to touch my bike before, did I? But you put your fucking grimy hand on it."

Toni looked terrified. "No—I—" His words disappeared into a scream as August twisted his fingers back and broke one.

"I told you not to touch my stuff," August yelled and slammed him back again. "I told you. You don't touch other people's things. You just don't fucking do it."

The beating began. Zeref smoked his cigarette to the filter, grossly fascinated by the rage and the helplessness. One was as familiar as an old friend, the other as coy as a potential lover, but both remained as insubstantial as air.

* * *

The sun sank and August showed Zeref how to lift his first car. It was an ancient Oldsmobile and it was so easy, he thought, _Maybe I_ can _do this._ They took that and another, this one a newer model Cadillac that August did on his own while Zeref watched, back to the garage on Forty-Fifth Street where a man both tall and wide examined their work.

He gave Zeref three hundred for the Olds and August eight for the Caddy. It wasn't enough but Zeref wasn't in much of a position to complain. He had more money now than he had this morning, and he didn't even have to dance with the devil to get it.

He determined to be the best so maybe he didn't _ever_ have to dance with that devil again.

When he got home, it was well past midnight. Angel was sitting on his step in a pair of ripped up jeans and a black bomber jacket. The wind was still cold enough to cut through her but her jacket was open so he could see the shirt she wore beneath. A white belly top. Her ribs looked even more pronounced beneath the streetlight.

"Where have you been?"

"Out," Zeref said shortly. It was none of her business.

"There was a kid that got brought in today."

"Okay."

"He was beaten up pretty bad."

Without much effort, he could hear the sound of flesh slamming into flesh again and again. "This town is shit." Truth.

"He spoke to the cops."

Zeref knew if Toni had anything solid on him, it'd be the police here waiting for him and not Angel. "Good for him."

"He couldn't identify you, but he said you had a tooth on a necklace and I knew." One matching Natsu's. The thong was so old it was starting to fray. Zeref waited for her to threaten him but she only asked, "Are you going to tell me why you just stood there and let it happen?"

He thought she should have been a little bit scared, but to him, she only looked thirsty for whatever twisted thing he was going to say. How disappointed would she be if he simply said he wanted to see if he could care enough to stop it?

Zeref moved by her, up the steps, key out.

Angel unfolded herself, miffed by his silence but also intrigued. One day that caviller attitude was going to land her in trouble with the wrong person. Hell, maybe _he_ was that person. "I got that stuff we talked about."

Zeref opened the door. The apartment was still black inside and had the air of a ghost. Angel followed him in and closed the door. "Contact your buyers. We can have cash in our hands tonight." Before they could do all of the drugs again, she meant.

"I changed my mind, I'm not selling." Zeref took off his jacket and threw it on the coatrack. He could _feel_ Angel's scathing glare.

"What do you mean?"

That he _couldn't_ anymore. He was trying to tell Natsu to get clean but he was drowning, too. He was a slave and he _hated_ it. "Figure some other way to move it."

Her expression got tight, her eyes narrow, and Zeref thought she was going to start screaming. Then a calmness fell over her and he wasn't sure if she just didn't believe his proclamation, or if she figured she could wear him down.

"I guess." She threw off her own jacket and flopped on the couch with her purse, pulling out all of the drugs she'd taken and spilling them on the table to put into piles. There was quite a lot. Methamphetamines, other generic opioids. Enough to win her a couple grand, at least. Zeref's chest was a big hole again. He looked at the lockbox August gave him. It was still too early to have more methadone. He needed to pace himself.

Angel put one of the pills she was sorting on her tongue and looked up at him challengingly. "Kiss me?"

She wanted to wear him down, then. "Fuck off."

Angel laughed. Zeref went to the washroom to sweat out the withdrawal and stayed there for a long time, hoping she'd go away. She didn't. Once the pill she took kicked in, he heard her turn on music and talk on her phone, trying to set up some buyers. He snuck into his bedroom an hour later and closed the door, muffling the light and the sound.

Angel came to him sometime near dawn, high and horny. Zeref was sleepless and frustrated. He fucked her roughly in every hole she had to fuck and bit her hard when she asked. He would not kiss her, though, lest he taste drugs on her tongue.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay in business?" she asked when he was through and she was cleaning come off her stomach.

Zeref fell back on his pillow without response, knowing that he should kick her out but unable to.


	7. Chapter 7

In the dark everything, it looks better

* * *

Zeref knew Natsu had been home because the apartment was clean. It was simple deduction—it wasn't like Angel was going to do it, and Zeref certainly couldn't focus for long enough to get it done with this level of efficiency.

When he checked in Natsu's room, though, it was empty, leaving Zeref to wonder if he came home just to leave again.

He drank his methadone and hid the rest in the beer fridge in his room, thinking Natsu wouldn't bother going in there for anything. He didn't like the idea of his little brother knowing just how far into the fire he'd wandered.

Though she was nowhere to be found, Angel still had a duffle bag tossed on Zeref's floor, meaning she'd be back. Some part of him was glad for the redundancy of their poisoned routine and looked forward to her return.

He sat down on his bed and waited for hours for her return. So long, he slept fitfully, fully clothed and sweaty as the methadone began to wear off. Near three, his door finally opened and she came in, smelling like the soap she used when she showered at the hospital, and cigarettes.

"Hi, baby."

"You're high," Zeref said immediately, wishing for his own sanity that he was wrong.

"Methamphetamines. We can stay up all night if you want," she said with a disassociated laugh and thrust her purse at him. "They're inside."

Zeref clutched the bag tightly, sweating and trying to breathe deeply. He wanted them so bad. Worse than he'd ever remembered wanting something before. But he thought of twitching on the bench and his absent brother. He thought of meth mouth and bones protruding from skin. He thought of people dozing their way through life, mostly dead, dreaming of nothing but their next fix and never, ever being satisfied. He didn't want to be King Midas. If he was going to kill himself, it was going to be with his revolver, head empty and clear.

Zeref let the bag fall from his hands. It fell on the floor and all of her things scattered out. It was a win, for sure, but it didn't _feel_ like one.

Angel flopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, unconcerned that her lipstick, tampons, wallet, Advil, and drugs were everywhere. "And selling? Will you still not do that, either?" Her smile was crooked with meanness. She thought he had no other options. He wasn't ready to let her know otherwise. He didn't trust Angel, especially with a secret like carjacking.

"I'll pass."

She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at him in the darkness, trying to tempt him. Only, he wasn't like the other guys she bullied into doing things her way. He'd made a decision and it was fucking hard keeping with it, but he _would_.

She must have seen some iron in him because she shrugged and moved on to her next order of business—taking her clothes off. Her skin was smooth and uninterrupted and there was a _small_ part of Zeref that thought he wanted to touch her to see what she'd feel like under his fingers. There was a bigger part of him that suddenly didn't give a fuck. He was tired. He had a ruse to keep up. Natsu thought he had a legitimate job. He'd get up tomorrow morning and let him keep thinking that. They needed to have some normal here, even if it was all a charade.

He laid down beside her and said, "I have shit I have to do early tomorrow. Take care of yourself?"

She was silent. Perhaps he should have paid better attention to the viper coiling in the dark.

* * *

Days and nights slipped by in a haze of obsession. He'd crave Angel's methamphetamines but drink his methadone like the good boy he wasn't. It rained on and on and on. He felt as dreary as the sky. Sometimes, he'd look at his empty anti-depressant bottle and wonder if he shouldn't try them again. He could go back on _all_ his meds, actually, and he wouldn't have to pretend so much, maybe. Maybe they would make him feel normal.

 _Or normal is a lie people on that medication tell so they don't disappoint their doctors and their families?_ He wondered.

Zeref's phone rang, drawing him from his contemplation. His mother's face was on the screen. This was one call of tens. She'd been trying since before he went on his binge. He'd been avoiding her. He couldn't do it much longer, though.

With a sigh, he answered the phone. "Hi, mom."

"Hi, baby." She said _baby_ differently than Angel did. More manipulative but much less seductive. He felt her voice inside his ear like cat claws in furniture. "How are you feeling?"

The words sounded right but there was no force behind them. She didn't care. _Maybe this is where the sickness comes from,_ Zeref thought. "Fine." Fucked up. Insecure. Narcissistic. Empty.

"And your brother?"

There was a bit more concern in her voice now. Natsu brought out the best in all of them. "He's…"

"Gildarts said he was staying there for a few days."

A small knot Zeref hadn't even been aware of untied itself in his chest. _That's_ where Natsu had been. Which was far better than on Ultear's floor, or Erik's. Gildarts was the most level person Zeref knew. He wasn't perfect but when he adulted, at least his bills got paid.

"You didn't even know, did you?" his mother accused.

"I've been busy and Natsu's got some shit going on."

"All the more reason you should be taking care of him."

Zeref opened his beer fridge and looked inside at his amber methadone bottles, thinking he could hardly take care of himself let alone his brother.

"What's going on with him?" his mother prodded when Zeref remained silent.

"Girls," he said, though his mind was on Natsu shivering on the bathroom floor, heroin running in his veins.

"Girls?"

"Girl," he amended. "Law School."

"Linda?"

"Lucy." He supposed he shouldn't feel relieved his mother fucked up with Natsu, too, but he wasn't.

"The lawyer's daughter," she remembered. "What happened? Did she cheat on him?"

"No."

"Then what?"

Zeref had to stop himself from scratching a hole in his arm for no better reason than because he could. Withdrawal was funny like that. He cracked the lid on the methadone bottle. It was his second-last. He'd have to return all of the bottles to August again and scrounge up a hundred bucks to give him. It was twice the price he'd have to pay if he just went to the clinic himself but he was afraid Mavis was still there and he might fall right back into trouble with her. He'd _liked_ her. Maybe he still did. And he _hated_ that.

"Zeref?"

He jarred away from the memory of Mavis' soft blonde hair and innocent smile. "Something about her dad being an elitist cunt."

"Zeref," she began as if to scold him for his vocabulary, then went back and began again. "What do you mean, elitist?"

"He doesn't like Natsu."

"Because we're not rich like him?"

"I don't fucking know," Zeref said, suddenly irritated without knowing why.

Immediately, his mother said, "Don't get lippy."

"Well, don't ask stupid questions. I have no idea."

"It's not stupid. I'm trying to be involved in your life. You guys never visit." Because the last time they did, Zeref got into a huge fight with Dad. But she knew that. "You hardly call anymore, either, and if you do, you never tell me anything." She made her voice soft. "I miss you."

Zeref couldn't tell if she was sincere or not, not without seeing her face. He sighed. "Ask Natsu that stuff. I don't know."

"I'll call him," she said after a moment, like she had to work herself up to it. "But do you have the money we talked about?"

Zeref had been expecting the question and told her a version of the truth. "Some things came up."

"So?"

"So, no, I don't."

"You promised me two weeks ago."

The accusation in her voice hit him like a ten-pound bag of salt to the chest. "And then stuff happened."

"Like what?"

 _I fucked it all away on opioids_ , he thought bitterly but wouldn't say it. He wanted no sympathy from her. No fuss, no rehab no one could afford. He just wanted to get his shit together on his own. He could. He _would_. "Just shit. I have bills to pay, too."

She started bitching. He held the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen. He could almost see his mother's mouth moving around the words. He thought of all the awful ways he could make her shut up, the terrible things he could say and the vicious ways he could say them but settled for pressing the END button and blocking her number until he felt like talking to her again.

Which might be never.

* * *

The more he pushed Angel away, the more time she seemed to spend at his apartment. Though she wasn't necessarily spending her time with him. More than once, he caught her tiptoeing out of his room in the small hours of the morning, wearing nothing but her underwear and a tank top, when she'd hear the front door open. When Natsu bothered to come home, it was always late.

Zeref listened to the couch cushions creak as they sat down together and whispered lightly back and forth. He strained to hear what was said but could never quite make out the voices. He imagined it was shit about him but that was just paranoia from drug withdrawal talking. August's dose of methadone was much lighter than Zeref's needed to be and he spent most of his time still in the grips of massive withdrawal.

He fell asleep fitfully with the sound of their voices scraping over his ears, never forming true words.

The next morning, he awoke dizzy and sick and tired. He dry heaved as quietly as he could in the bathroom and washed his mouth out with Listerine. Somehow, they'd run out of toothpaste. He wasn't keeping it together as much as he thought he was.

He made himself coffee afterward and was sitting at the table, cracking the lid of his last methadone when Natsu's door opened and he came out wearing only a pair of jeans, looking rumpled and tired and as pale as Zeref felt. Zeref looked for burns on his lips or bruises on his arms but could see none. Either he was better at pretending than Zeref was or he was staying away from heroin.

If it wasn't drugs occupying his time, then…

There was a deep bruise on Natsu's neck and an old bite-mark on his shoulder he probably forgot about. He fucked other girls in between Lucy, Zeref knew but thought only Lucy could keep him up late _and_ clean.

He sighed internally, thinking about Jellal and his warning and how Zeref was going to have to take care of it, apparently, because Natsu didn't seem to be able to.

 _It's better this way._ Natsu _could_ do the rough work, he'd proven that again and again—he was a scrapper. But that old simmering rage Zeref felt when he thought of his brother lying in the hospital was the closest thing he'd ever felt to anything real and he would do anything not to feel it again. As much as he sometimes craved to be like everyone else, it was better to be an automaton.

"Morning." Natsu pulled out the chair opposite Zeref and fell into it with a thump. He even smelled like Lucy's perfume. He was barely even trying.

"Morning."

"You look like shit."

Zeref hid the Methadone bottle a little better between his legs beneath the table. "Flu. What's your excuse?"

Natsu scrubbed his hand through his hair, making the bright locks stand on end and looked down at the table for just a second—his liar's tell. "I got a job at Driftwood, working maintenance and counter. I've been on nights"

The Driftwood Motel was the shittiest motel in town and _not_ the place Zeref would have imagined Lucy Heartfilia meeting for a clandestine affair. For a brief moment, he wondered if he was way off his mark and if Natsu was meeting someone else instead. Then he looked at the happy glow that surrounded his brother, the slight crook to his mouth, the lightness in his eyes and the way his shoulders were straight and decided no. This screamed Lucy Heartfilia through and through, which in actuality, screamed trouble.

"Don't let them work you too hard."

Some of the glow came away from Natsu. "You didn't get in until late last night."

Because he'd been out helping August jack a car. Zeref lied again. "They keep swapping my shift at the coffee shop, people keep quitting." He hoped his lie stood firm.

Natsu blinked and Zeref thought for _sure_ he was going to call him on that bullshit, but instead, Natsu asked the unexpected, "Have you talked to Mom?"

"No. And you shouldn't, either," Zeref said before he could stop himself. He didn't want her bugging Natsu for money, too, when he failed to provide. She was toxic without ever meaning to be and put unnecessary strain on every life she touched.

Natsu didn't ask why. If he was feeling himself, Zeref would have looked into that a little more, but he desperately wanted to dig into his coffee and his methadone. He didn't feel right in any sense of the word.

"Yeah." Natsu stood and returned to his room without another word.

* * *

Two days later, Zeref woke to a note left on the kitchen counter. Natsu was gone to their parents for the weekend. It was flippant of him not to say anything and childish and it made Zeref wonder just how much of his fuckery Natsu was aware of.

He unblocked his mother's number so he could call her. She didn't answer. He texted her, too. _DON'T ask him for money._ The text never went through, though. Zeref suspected she blocked his number as well, in retribution. She could be petty like that.

Without having Natsu around to put on an act for, Zeref went back to his room and slept for another four fitful hours. It was two o'clock when his door was pounded on. He yanked it back and was met by silky hair as dark as the night's sky.

Ultear had done herself up in the best ways she knew how, dangerously red lipstick, long, thick lashes, satin beneath her spring/late winter coat. She looked beautiful and fucked up and like she was perched on a perilous ledge.

"I don't have anything to sell," Zeref said immediately—the first words they'd spoken in nearly a month.

"I'm not looking to buy, just forget a little." She held up a dime bag of weed. Who knew where it came from or what it was laced with? Zeref immediately felt the lion in his chest perk up and gape open his mouth. It wasn't opioids and it wasn't methamphetamines but it was _something_. And if it helped take the scraped-raw edge off everything and it was free, Zeref was willing to try it.

He opened the door barely wide enough for her. She brought in the scent of spring—fresh fallen rain and cool air—cigarettes, and the smell of another man's cologne. It was a scent Zeref recognized on her. She'd been to see her stepbrother and sometimes lover. It was the most fucked up thing in Ultear's near-perfect life and the reason Zeref was drawn to her when it seemed she was only there for the thrill ride.

Ultear looked around the apartment like she expected people to slide out of dark corners but for once, the place was empty, it was just them. She faced him as she took off her coat. "Angel?"

"She's at work." Zeref added, "She doesn't live here." Though it felt like it lately. Did that make them something more? Zeref wasn't sure. Fuck, he wasn't even sure he liked her. She was just there, inserting herself in his life. An addiction in her own right, bringing drugs and temptation. He'd been pushing her away lately but didn't understand why he didn't just blatantly tell her to get the fuck out.

That seemed to please Ultear. She found a spot on the floor and took a pipe out of her purse and packed it tightly with weed. Zeref stood over her, watching her work. She looked up at him after letting it go on for a moment, straight-faced. Angel might have smiled but Ultear was a different creature altogether. Her lips laid flat like bloodstains on pale skin.

"If you're going to tell me to get out, just do it. I'm not going to cry."

"I think I want you here," Zeref responded, which was the truth. She was a change in flavour and pace.

His words had an unforeseen affect. Ultear's cheeks pinked and her lips twitched. He'd made her happy. She subdued whatever expression tried to escape her, though, and she went back to being the broody girl Zeref sometimes admired.

He sat down beside her, right on the floor, and handed her a lighter. Smoke clouded the air, hazy and as thick as fog. It surrounded them and blurred out all of everything else. Zeref didn't have to look at his table, messy from whatever the fuck drugs it was Angel took on it that morning or Natsu's empty room, and he couldn't see the dishes he had to do to keep up his illusion of being _together_.

Then the cloud of smoke rose and he could see everything clearly again. He took the pipe from Ultear and fogged it up once more. It was better when he was faded.

"You looked like you needed that," Ultear said. Already, she sounded distant to Zeref's ears.

He turned his head and looked at her. Whatever tension had been riding with her was melting away. "What's going on with you?"

Ultear took another draw off her pipe before handing it to Zeref and laying back on the floor. Zeref killed it and laid back with her, shoulders brushing. He felt a shiver move through her and wondered what it would be like to crave someone that much. It could be mean, being this close to her, and it could cause him more problems in the future, but he didn't feel like stopping.

"I'm fucked," Ultear finally lamented in a voice that was too full of levity for the situation. Zeref said nothing but she didn't need prompting. "I think he cares about me. Honestly cares. Like, wants to _be_ with me cares."

"Your stepbrother?"

"Obviously."

"So?"

She turned her head, her hair glistening like a black waterfall against the questionably clean floor. "So _no_. We can't. I can't. My mom would fuck me up."

"Then stay away from him."

She exhaled and touched between her breasts as if remembering where his fingers had once been.

"He's in your head."

"He's everywhere."

That was the most honest he'd ever seen Ultear and he craved honesty like he craved cocaine and Percocet. He needed to keep seeing it to remind himself to always be the best fake version of himself.

"So fill your head with someone else."

She searched his eyes. Who knew what she was seeing? Beasts? Or exactly what she wanted to see?

Ultear rolled into him and put her mouth against his in a tentative kiss first, testing the grounds, seeing how much he meant what he said. Zeref opened up for her and searched out her tongue. She tasted like cinnamon and whimpered ever so slightly and he got rock hard. There was power in knowing he had such control over one of the most unmalleable girls he'd ever been with. She was stubborn and headstrong and got through life by pure determination. And yet, she bent to even his craziest whims.

He thought of the gun he held in his hand and the way she watched him lift it to his head, the uncertain look on her face and the tension that moved through her when he pulled the trigger, and the _relief_ afterward when he was still alive. It was nice to feel wanted, he had to admit.

He slid his hand up over her middle, beneath the satin of her shirt. She was fuller than Angel was now because she wasn't struggling in the same ways they were. She was a slave to no drug, no sleepless night. That was nice, too. Ultear was almost like an anchor in a sea of insanity.

She sighed and nipped his lip when he got up to the undersides of her breasts. Zeref squeezed her hard, unable to help himself, and pulled her into him. This was indulgence for the beast he'd been denying for weeks but it was safe. Ultear was the burning fuse, she wasn't the bomb.

She climbed on top of him, forcing him flat against the floor. Deftly, she undid her shirt and yanked it up out of her high-rise jeans. There were hickey marks on her breasts. Zeref kissed over top of them so she could think about someone else when she saw them and told himself it was a kindness.

Ultear yanked her bra off and pushed her breasts together for him, moving her hips against his in a way that seemed overzealous at first until he felt how warm and wet she was through their clothing. Zeref's body responded to hers.

Ultear yanked him up and pulled his shirt over his head. The floor was startlingly cold when he laid back down again.

She did the same for him as he did for her, leaving her mouth marks over Angel's so he didn't have to think of her all the time. Each time her mouth met his skin it was like fireworks going off. He was hyper-sensitive to this one thing. Everything else was a blur in the background, like the fear that Natsu might come home and catch him like this in the middle of the living room with a girl that he'd been with himself, no less, or Angel returning and proving just how jealous she could be.

He was in sweatpants, making Ultear's job easier when she finally got to the junction of his legs. She rubbed through his pants first, though, seemingly as much for herself as it was for him. He lifted his hips up for her and she relented, pulling the fabric down so he came out. She took her time touching him before placing a condom on and then taking him into her mouth. He gathered her hair in one hand and cupped her chin with the other and fucked her mouth deep enough to make her gasp for breath when she could.

Zeref pushed himself to the brink of orgasm before he let Ultear come up for air. Her cheeks were twin roses of colour and her makeup was running a bit beneath her eyes but she looked thrilled. She stood and got out of her jeans. There was another hickey on her thigh, this one large, and a handprint to match.

Ultear stepped up and knelt around his shoulders, positioning herself for his tongue. He left his handprints in place of her stepbrother's and when she orgasmed, he bit her thigh hard enough to bruise. She thanked him for it in between panted breaths.

She wriggled away from him when he let her and positioned herself over his cock. It felt very intimate letting her look at him in that reverent way, but Zeref let her continue doing it, neither encouraging her nor denying her. He didn't even _touch_ her now. She did all the work, spreading her legs wide and planting her hands on her knees.

Zeref watched her move up and down over his body, letting everything fade away. The beast gnawing his insides was temporarily satiated.


	8. Chapter 8

Remember when the lights dim down  
It's only the dark

* * *

Light bounced off low-hanging clouds like lightning in the late-summer sky. Laughter chased it like a thunderclap, zagging through the streets, distorting, to Zeref's ear. He sucked on his cigarette. It crackled like dried twigs and coned. He was smoking too fast. His thoughts were all jumbled, though, as he tried to figure out how to treat what happened _after_ Ultear.

The apartment's door opened, and she came out, jean jacket on her shoulders and chunky heels on her feet. She stepped around Zeref, the cuff of her jacket the only thing that ever touched him and descended the stairs skillfully as though she were sober. Then she was meandering down the road.

Zeref wanted to call her back and ask her what was between her and Natsu. What was between her and _him,_ and why she came there tonight. He felt like he was staring at a different language and struggling to read it without a guide. But that language was waltzing away from him as though he didn't matter.

Zeref almost believed that. Then he remembered it was Ultear. Ultear and her penchant for games. He saw her walk for what it really was—a ploy. She wanted him to call her back. He wouldn't, though, because girls like Ultear wanted something guys like Zeref couldn't give. They deserved it, too. Ultear was like Angel in as many ways as she wasn't. They were both mean, they were both cold, but Ultear's was all surface frost. Underneath, she had a lot of stuff to offer, and Zeref was just like a forest fire. He'd burn it all up without even saying thank you. It was best if she kept going.

"Does your brother know you share girls?" asked a voice with a drawling accent.

Zeref took his time in turning, breathing in a lungful of smoke and letting it out gradually, so he didn't show how badly he'd been startled. There was a man standing with his back against the movie store, arms crossed, a cigar in his mouth. He looked ridiculous in his sunglasses when the sky was dark. Zeref wanted to laugh at him but he looked at the guy's expensive suit bulging at his hip, and well-tied tie and the noise got all jammed up.

"Cat got your tongue?"

"I'm trying to enjoy a smoke," Zeref finally said. "Can I do that before I answer any stupid fucking questions?"

Silence webbed between them, but it wasn't companionable. Zeref finished his cigarette and flicked the butt onto the road where it would smoulder until the wind pushed it into a puddle or it burned out. He rose and entered the apartment. Sunglasses followed him inside, closing the door. Zeref heard it lock, too. His tension was up, his nerves were raw—he would kill for a hit of _anything_ just to feel fuzzy and stoned, and that one _click_ near put him over the edge. He reminded himself to breathe and be calm.

"Do you know who I am?" the man asked. His voice made Zeref cringe. That accent.

"Expensive suit, side piece." Zeref made a show of scrunching up his face and thinking it through. "Are you from the Godfather set?"

The man didn't crack a smile. "Name's Wally. I work for Mister Fernandez."

"Get benefits? I've been looking for something new."

Wally remained straight-faced. He pulled open his suit and reached into the pocket. Zeref tensed, expecting a weapon to point at him but Wally only pulled out pieces of well-folded paper. Zeref could practically taste the anxiety in each one of those folds. Someone had opened and closed them frequently. Mulled over them. Opened them again.

Wally threw the stack on the floor where they spun and slid over each other. One of the papers opened. Zeref squinted to read the name of a local motel. Below were room rates for the week. Natsu's soberness, his improving mood. The pieces all snugged together, and he shook his head. He knew his brother had been seeing Lucy, but he didn't know he was leaving such a paper trail. "You fucking idiot, Natsu."

"Yet, you don't sound particularly surprised."

"Have you ever tried to make my brother do something he doesn't want to do?" Wally just looked at him. Zeref said, "Lucy's father shouldn't be surprised, either. She's the same fucking way. Or does he think it's Natsu's college fund that's bankrolling this?" He nodded to the motel receipts.

"He doesn't care _who's_ paying. He wants it to stop and he wants it to stop _now._ " There was a dangerous edge to his voice. Zeref looked again at Wally's hip. Now that his jacket was open, he could see the blunt edge of the gun grip. It was a pistol, like his, but it was a Glock instead of the 44 Magnum beneath his bed. There would be no fussing with bullets or hoping that it was cocked to the right chamber. He'd fire and Zeref would be tasting a bullet. Or were those reserved for Natsu? He felt a blanket of cold settle over him. It was as familiar to him as an old friend and it had been forever since he'd welcomed it home. Yet, Zeref hesitated to open the door.

"He loves her." Which sounded like a weak fucking excuse, especially to someone who'd never actually been in love.

"Frankly, neither Mister Heartfilia nor Mister Fernandez cares. They warned him."

"They put him in the fucking _hospital_." Where Natsu was bruised and broken for weeks. Zeref could still feel the rage that led him to bust up some kid's face, trying to learn if it was a random mugging or if his brother was targeted. He ran his thumb over the raised scar on his knuckles. The proverbial door was rattling. Zeref felt the cold beyond it leach into his fingertips.

"Which he thought was kinder than a grave. They're done being kind." The humanity was bleaching out of Wally faster than Zeref could keep track of. One moment he almost looked like things could be civil and the next, he looked barely even human. "Where is he?"

Zeref laughed, short, quiet. "No."

"No?"

He didn't see red like people say you do. He didn't even see black. He saw everything with heightened clarity, actually. People just say that stuff because they don't like to admit that they think about what they were doing.

He felt like a snake lashing out. He hit Wally's abruptly square jaw so hard, Zeref felt his finger snap. That would hurt. At some point. For now, it just felt weird. Like it wasn't in the right place.

Wally stumbled back, dazed for an instant. Then he shook it off and started to go for his gun. Zeref hit him again with his other hand. Wally's temple was softer than his jaw. He fell and smacked his head off the corner of the table, stunning himself. His sunglasses went off-kilter. Zeref looked into his eyes. They weren't cold and hard like August's had been when he beat on Toni. They were wide and wounded, and way too human to do a job like he was doing without access to his gun. That was the problem with the world. Not enough sociopaths doing the rough work. Which was why, Zeref supposed, Wally believed he couldn't be beaten do death with bare fists. He didn't know anyone savage enough to do it.

Zeref made sure they were acquainted.

* * *

There was blood everywhere. The walls, the floor, the ceiling. Somehow. Even in places he didn't expect it to be. Like under the lip of the table. Zeref stared at the mess and its source. He didn't feel scared, exactly, but he felt shaky. From his temples to his ankles. The tremors came and went, sometimes attacking him so badly, his teeth would chatter. When they left, he was as hollow as a bored-out hole.

His brain kept slipping. He needed an action plan. Because people that kept dead bodies on their living room floor found themselves in trouble. He needed to get rid of Wally.

Their neighbour across the street, where the houses were nicer, kept shovels in their garden shed. Zeref saw the rotund little lady out there in the spring and the fall moving her blue hydrangeas. He used the cover of darkness to retrieve them, taking both in case one broke or it was better than the other. He was thinking of preparedness more than ever. He supposed hiding a dead body would do that to you when you weren't overcome by fear or horror.

He was staring at Wally's limp form and wondering how he was going to get him out of the house without being seen when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Zeref only had time to tense when the door opened and Natsu came through.

He looked beaten up and exhausted, as he always did when he came back from their parents. He didn't even lift his head for a moment and Zeref had a vision of him walking around the body and Zeref and retreating to his room without ever noticing anything was amiss. Then Natsu closed the door and looked up and Zeref familiarized himself with a brand-new emotion. Total horror. He'd seen something close to it before, when he told Doctor Raquel he'd watched their old neighbour set a dead cat on fire, but _this_ horror was deep-seated on a face he knew better than his own. It was almost enough to rattle his core.

They stared at each other in silence for so long, Zeref thought it wasn't possible for either of them to speak, then Natsu's phone rattled off and they both jumped. Lucy's face was on the bright screen. She was so blonde and so bright and so out of place in the apartment. She had a black bow in her hair, and she was smiling.

Natsu lifted the phone up like he didn't recognize it.

"Don't answer it," Zeref said, thinking of self-preservation and lies and the integrity his brother had but he didn't.

"It's Lucy," Natsu said in a vague and soft way like he was a threadbare sheet just twisting in a gale and Lucy could be the shelter that made it all stop.

He was going to do it. "Don't fucking answer it," Zeref growled. "You'll flip out and she'll know."

Natsu looked up at him with the largest eyes, not moving. The phone stopped ringing. "Fuck," Natsu whispered in the silence. And again, "Fuck."

Zeref had been sort of cool before but now he felt like there was a balloon of agitation inflating inside of him. Natsu wasn't supposed to be here. He only complicated things. Now he didn't just have to worry about himself. He had to worry about his level brother who was softer-edged in every way. Natsu kept looking at Zeref's hands. And then the body on the floor, and mouthing, _fuck._ Fuck, indeed. Fuck.

"Get out of here," Zeref decided. That was the best, easiest way. If he wasn't involved, nothing could go wrong, he could never talk, and he'd never have to cart the memory of this around with him. He could go back to being the good boy. The _best_ Dragneel.

Natsu looked like he didn't understand. His face was pale and open and innocent and scared. "What?"

"Leave." Zeref lifted his hands to push him back towards the door. Then he saw all the blood and thought better of it. He used his words instead. "You don't have to be involved. You were at Mom and Dad's; you didn't come home."

There.

Zeref turned his mind toward getting Wally out of the apartment. He'd have to carry him, there was no other option. He'd lifted dead animals before, mostly cats and dogs he'd found squished on the road. He'd even pulled the teeth out of one dog's head when he was young and wanted to make Natsu a necklace with it. Men were different, though. Larger, more awkward, limper, and entirely too much like him.

Zeref imagined himself in Wally's place. If he hadn't been as vicious, it could have been so. It would have been EMS pulling him out of there, though. Men and women with gurneys and the experience of lifting and shuffling around hundreds of bodies. He wondered if he shouldn't have tried to go to school for that. If he had, he would have had some real-life experience for what was to come now.

Zeref crouched low and grabbed Wally from around the shoulders. He had a head wound Zeref hadn't noticed before. He must have gashed it open when he fell on the table. But it was so huge. Zeref followed the trail of blood and saw multiple globs on the ground. He remembered grabbing Wally's shoulders and forcing him down repeatedly.

Wally's head rolled right, and blood smeared all over the wall and down Zeref's leg. Head wounds bled so fucking much. Zeref clenched his jaw. He didn't know _how_ things got so out of hand, or how he was going to fix them. He'd done bad stuff before but nothing like this. This was next level. And the longer he thought about it, the larger and larger that ball of anxiety in his chest felt. Soon it would pop, and he didn't know if he was going to scream or throw up when it happened. Both, possibly.

"You can't take him out like that."

Zeref startled. Natsu was _still_ standing over him, looking down. "I told you to leave."

Natsu ignored him and went to the rubber maid they kept beside the couch. It was always overflowing with old ratty blankets. He pulled out one out at random. Zeref recognized the shredded retro Ghostbusters blanket, black except for Slimer on the front, lolling his large pink tongue out of his gap-toothed mouth. The last time they'd used it was at their parents for a sleepover for Natsu's eighth birthday. They'd invited a bunch of kids over from his class and made a blanket fort between two chairs and watched horror movies they weren't supposed to watch but Zeref was babysitting and he didn't care. He could still remember laying on his back at the end of the night, feeling Natsu shiver beside him and whisper about Slimer coming to life.

There were bigger things to fear now.

Natsu returned and laid the blanket on the ground beside Wally.

Zeref _knew_ he should tell Natsu to fuck off again and save them both some headaches, but truth be told, it was going to be a pain in the ass to get Wally out on his own. He could use an extra set of hands. Why not the ones that were already in on the secret? Besides, there was no one else in the world Zeref trusted better than Natsu.

Zeref again gathered Wally up by the shoulders. Natsu grabbed his feet. Once he was centred, they rolled him up like the worst burrito.

There was painter's tape on the shelf. Zeref didn't even remember why he bought it; it wasn't like they were going to paint their shitty, illegal apartment. It was so old that the sticky glue wasn't quite so sticky anymore.

He let Natsu wrap it around Wally's head and his feet. He used so much that they ran out of tape. He threw the empty roll somewhere behind him.

Then Natsu stood and grabbed the truck keys off the hook by the door.

"Be careful," Zeref told him. Natsu closed the door behind himself without a response. Zeref looked down at Wally. He looked just like a body from an old mobster movie, all wrapped up and featureless, the top of the blanket soaking through with blood.

"You stupid fucking cock," Zeref muttered and kicked his side without much gumption. The only thing he was sorry about was Natsu's involvement.

The Dakota's growling engine sounded right close to the door. Zeref turned off the interior lights and opened the door slowly. Natsu had backed all the way up over the stairs. He turned off the lights and the engine and climbed out like he was going to help Zeref put Wally in the bed.

"I'll do it myself. Keep watch."

For the first time that night, Natsu didn't argue. He turned his back on Zeref and looked up and down the street. They stopped once for a passing car but that was all.

Wally was a pain in the ass alive and dead hadn't improved his disposition. He was uncooperative getting into the truck bed. Zeref shoved with all his might. The blanket came loose. He had to stop and fix it. Then he pushed Wally all the way up to the front of the cab then threw in the two shovels he'd grabbed. It seemed rather fortuitous now, taking both.

"Where did those come from?" Natsu asked in a harsh whisper. He was looking at Zeref like he didn't even recognize him. _Like he thinks you planned this_ , Zeref realized. That stung a little.

"Next door." Zeref nodded across the street. Their neighbour's shed was still open. "We'll put them back after."

"So no one can add robbery to the charge." Natsu sounded on the verge of hysterical laughter. He did that sometimes when he got nervous. Zeref glowered at him.

"I told you to disappear—"

Natsu shook his head furiously and got in the driver's seat. Zeref gathered up the papers Wally had thrown on the floor, then closed the front door and locked it, and got in the driver's side, too, pushing Natsu over to the other side of the truck.

Natsu looked at the papers between them but didn't ask. Yet.

Zeref drove to the most secluded part of town he knew, turning down a Restricted Access road.

"What is this place?"

"A quarry." Decommissioned years ago. When he was young and would sneak out to the city, Zeref used to come here and throw cherry bombs at red ant nests and watch them boil up out of the ground.

His headlights swung over the pit. There were huge craters in the earth, where excavating machines had dug up stone and sand, but trees had since grown and filled the scars. In between those were garbage bags, contractor type and kitchen garbage type, and large waste items that had years to collect.

In one corner was a red burned-out car without licence plates or VIN numbers. Zeref thought he recognized it as one of the Hondas he'd lifted weeks ago. How many more cars were there just like this one, sprinkled all over the city? _And_ w _hen are you going to get caught_? asked a sharp voice in Zeref's mind.

He shoved it aside.

The headlights touched on an ancient light blue fridge with its door shorn off. Zeref drove towards it slowly. It was perfect for what he needed.

A high, thin noise filled the cab of the truck. Zeref followed it to its source. Natsu was looking between the fridge and the bed of the truck and his chest was rising and falling far too quickly as he imagined what came next. He was going to hyperventilate.

"Breathe," Zeref commanded.

Natsu took in a noisy breath and held it. The one after sounded a little better.

Zeref drove right up to the fridge and shut off the lights and got out. The air felt crisp, assuring him that summer was letting out its dying breath. The moon was huge and silver, hanging low like a fat apple off a wispy branch.

He snagged a shovel from the truck bed and started working, digging the tip into the compacted soil. He felt his broken finger more clearly now. He'd need to wrap it up soon. It made digging slow and painful.

Natsu remained in the car with his phone screen lighting up his face. Zeref entertained tearing open his door and smashing the phone to little pieces, that way Natsu couldn't crack and tell Lucy where he was or what he was doing. That seemed intentionally cruel, though.

After a moment, Natsu exited the truck without his phone and got the other shovel. He set up beside Zeref and dug into the earth as well. That was as far as he got, though. He stood there for several long seconds. Zeref heard the pinching, wheezing noise again and sighed the same time Natsu squeezed out an unintelligible, "Whoishe?"

Zeref kept digging. He hit a rock and winced at the ugly screechy noise it made. Natsu jarred. That seemed to do the trick, he repeated, more calmly, "Who is he?"

_Is,_ not _was_. Zeref wasn't going to sugar-coat it for his brother. He skipped right to past-tense and stayed there. "His name _was_ Wally."

Natsu swayed dangerously like he was going to pass out. Zeref resigned himself to finishing the hole himself and carting his brother around as he'd done for Wally, but then Natsu squeezed his shovel tight and got himself under control again. Sometimes, Zeref thought he could adapt to anything.

Natsu asked, "What happened?"

Zeref looked at his brother through a sheaf of sweaty hair that'd fallen over his brow. He could lie. Lies were easier and kinder. But Natsu deserved to know the stakes of the game him and Lucy were playing. "He came looking for you, Natsu."

Zeref kept shovelling while Natsu struggled to understand. "For what?"

Zeref scraped another rock. He got his shovel under it and hefted it out. "He had questions about credit card receipts from a motel across town."

Natsu's eyes moved back to the truck, where the papers still sat on the bench seat.

"I told him to fuck off, he wanted you, though." He relived slamming Wally's head into the floor, still righteous and furious. How fucking dare he come into their apartment with his fucking accusations and his fucking gun, like he could force Natsu to do a goddamn thing he wanted just _because_ Jude Heartfilia didn't like the way he fucked his daughter?

Zeref dug the shovel in extra far, imagining he was shoving it through Wally's throat. He took out an extra-large scoop of dirt and was throwing it to the side just as headlights cut through the trees. Zeref straightened, prepared to do whatever he needed to keep his and Natsu's secret safe.

The headlights stopped only partway up the dirt road. There was a clanging of metal, leading Zeref to believe it was a contractor dumping his garbage material rather than paying to take it to the dump.

It went on for twenty minutes at least, then the shrieking of metal stopped, a door slammed closed, and an engine garbled. The driver turned out onto the road and the quarry was quiet again.

After that, Natsu started digging with vigour, working twice as fast as Zeref. He wasn't burned out, tired or too skinny. With his help, Wally's grave was dug in half an hour. He hopped into the back of the truck, too, when all was ready and took Wally by the shoulders. Zeref took his feet and together, they got Wally off the back of the truck and into his hole in the ground. He thudded down with finality.

Natsu returned to the truck and got the credit card receipts. He lit them with a lighter he took from his pocket and together, he and Zeref watched them burn. When they were too small to hold any longer, he let them flutter down with Wally.

Zeref waited until the papers fizzled out, unreadable nubs, then set about shovelling the dirt over Wally. He was meticulous, getting any stray bits of dirt and using his hands to smooth out the rest and the shovels to tamp it down so it didn't look suspicious. Then he had Natsu help him tip over the fridge to cover the mess. His finger protested every bit of abuse. It was swelling and going purple. Zeref grit his teeth and ignored it.

They loaded the truck again without standing over the grave silently and reminiscing on what they'd done.

They didn't talk on the way home. Zeref watched out of the corner of his eye as Natsu deleted Lucy's contact information from his phone and got rid of her on all his social media accounts. He even deleted any pictures she sent him, tame and lascivious alike. He undid the window and chucked the motel room key into the ditch, too. Zeref wanted to tell him that he shouldn't bother, _fuck_ Jude and _fuck_ Jellal and anyone else they sent their way, they'd take care of. But he knew Natsu didn't want to hear his brother would kill again if it meant keeping him safe and giving him what he wanted. People got antsy about that stuff.

_You should be, too_ , Zeref reminded himself. _It's not right. Nothing you do is fucking right._ He felt all his abnormalities bearing down on him like he was a piece of aluminium and they were the vice, bending him out of shape. _And now you have to clean up the house. You have to clean up your brother. You have to teach him how to live with a secret like this._

Except, Zeref didn't know how to live with it, either. It's not like people put out self-help books about living with covering up your first murder.

They pulled into the parking lot behind the movie store. Zeref was relieved to see it was empty. Sometimes, people just showed up at the apartment and most of the time, he didn't mind, but imagine, sending Ultear and Merdy away, or Angel, or August, or Erik, if he came looking for product. Imagine, explaining his bloody hands. Imagine, if he drapes weren't pulled over completely and they could peek inside. Imagine if they _knew._

_You'd have to take care of them, too._

More blood. More secrets. More ways he wouldn't be like everyone else. More ways Natsu would end up being just like him.

Doctor Raquel had taught Zeref how to recognize a spiral. He was in one, for sure. He popped open his glovebox and riffled around in it. He was just shy of yanking everything out all over the truck when he found what he was looking for—a little bump of cocaine. His _just in case_. He didn't know just in case of _what_ when he saved it months ago, but it turned out it was just in case he murdered someone and was freaking out and needed something to focus him.

He almost laughed. He snorted the bump off his hand and didn't leave anything for his brother. He let it burn in his sinuses until he felt it spread to his blood. His vision sharpened and his hearing heightened. His finger stopped burning so intensely, and—his favourite feeling—energy coursed through his veins. It was going to be hard coming back off this but maybe it was worth it if he could think and protect his family.

"Get the cleaning supplies. We need to wipe down the truck and the apartment, then we need to shower and clean out the drains, too."

Natsu was staring at him blankly. "With what?"

"Bleach," Zeref decided. It wouldn't get rid of the blood completely, but it would destroy the DNA thoroughly enough that no one would be able to tell who it belonged to. That was good enough for him.

Natsu gathered everything together while Zeref returned the shovels, dirtier now than they'd ever been in their life. When Zeref returned, Natsu helped him destroy every bit of evidence. They worked their hands raw and wrecked the upholstery in the truck. Zeref didn't care, it wasn't ever very nice anyway. The whole thing took hours.

He let Natsu shower first once he decided they were done, and he was coming off his high. He got in afterwards and watched the remainder of Wally's blood sluice down the drain. He still didn't feel bad. Was he supposed to, or was this natural? For the first time in years, he wished he could ask Doctor Raquel.

There was a first aid kit under the sink. He dug a finger splint out of it from the last time he'd punched someone in the face and broken his finger. It hurt like a sonofabitch getting it on. He popped three Advil and two Tylenol to help.

Natsu was in his room when Zeref emerged with a towel around his waist. He left him to it, going for a package of cigarettes on the table. He took it to his own room and fell back on his bed dressed only in his damp towel. He smoked while he relived ending Wally and dashing the shovel into the dirt.

Sometime after the sun had risen, Zeref heard pounding on the door. His paranoia had him imagining it was someone coming to tell him they knew his secrets but when he got his revolver from beneath his bed and sat up, squinting out of his open door into the living room, he saw the golden glow of Lucy's hair as she tried to peek through the blankets Zeref used as drapes. He considered treating her the way he treated Wally. There was no way Natsu could fuck up then. He knew he never would, though. That wouldn't be what made Natsu happy.

The knocking stopped only to start again a moment later. This time, it was coming from the back of the apartment. Lucy had moved on to knock on Natsu's window. Zeref lifted himself up to watch out his own window. Sunny, bright Lucy was a storm cloud of tears as she tried to get Natsu's attention.

A car pulled up behind her and her cousin got out. He took her by the shoulders and yanked her back forcefully. She pushed him off at first but then she went totally limp, sagging into his arms and sobbing.

Zeref waited patiently for his brother to do something stupid but Natsu's window remained closed and so did his door. He wouldn't go to her. Zeref told himself that was _good_. Coupled with that and Fernandez's missing man, it might have even been enough.


	9. Chapter 9

There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark.

* * *

People were like unmoored boats in rough water. If you didn't pay attention, they just slipped away. And sometimes, even when you were watching, if you didn't reach out and grab them.

Natsu was like that. A ghost ship, drifting in and out of range, and Zeref let him. He didn't know how to stop him from staying out all night. He didn't know how to keep him from sleeping all day. And he didn't know if he _should_ because, honestly, it was easier to let Natsu self-medicate than to talk about what they did or give him the help that he needed. Even though he was destroying himself.

He came home smelling like sickly sweet smoke, his cheeks were hollow, and his skin was pale. He filled his time with Brandish, not Lucy, and more than once, Zeref caught him driving out to the quarry to look at where they'd stashed Wally. He knew because when he was feeling restless, he'd walk out there himself and imagine the cool calm of the grave they dug. Maybe other killers revisited the crime scene because they wanted to relive it, but Zeref _lived_ in it and just wanted to feel the quiet.

His finger healed, though it was knobby and slightly crooked. He hadn't set it properly and now it was too late to go back unless he broke it again. Sometimes, sitting on the couch, he'd grab his knuckle and try. He'd get to a certain point, though, and his gusto would fade out. It wasn't that he was afraid of hurting himself—he'd spent his lifetime matching Natsu's injuries for investigative reasons and knew what to expect from pain—he just had no purpose.

To spite the disruptions in his life, Zeref tried to keep some semblance of a schedule. He'd wake around nine, shower, eat, clean. Natsu would stumble in around ten-thirty from the dingy abandoned restaurant he used to smoke H in with Brandish (Ultear always seemed to know more than anyone and in between taking off her clothes and putting them back on, she'd tell him) and Zeref would make a half-hearted attempt at feeding him breakfast. Most of the time, Natsu would refuse. Sometimes, though, he ate. Sometimes, he'd bring it all back up again, but at least he tried.

The cold weather turned warm, and then hot enough that Zeref felt like he was melting as he left the house to meet August for a job late one night. He was shedding his jacket and not really paying much attention to his surroundings, so it was a surprise when he knocked his shin into something hard and metal someone had dropped in the corner of the parking lot.

The streetlamp had gone out two weeks ago and the city hadn't fixed it yet. Zeref pulled out his phone and used the flashlight to see by. The light illuminated the stainless edge of a mini-fridge. The door was cracked open an inch and a cloying, sweet smell was drifting up from the inside. It wasn't old sandwiches. This had the scent of putrefaction. Raw, rotting meat.

Zeref turned off his flashlight and looked around the parking lot for any shadows that looked unnatural and listened _hard_ for breathing. Anything to indicate another's presence. Only when he determined he was alone did he nudge open the door with the tip of his boot.

Wally's head looked up at him. His neck had been severed and messily, too, so long, jagged pieces of flesh hung between the metal bars of the tiny fridge, Grey skin sagged on the edge of sharp cheekbones, as if any second, it'd slough off. The cool spring temperatures had been kind to him but now that summer was rolling in, he was falling apart.

Someone had taken his sunglasses and put them back on his face, but the tinted glass was broken. Zeref remembered picking the pieces up from his hallway and carefully disposing of them on random roads so the evidence was spread out and difficult to find.

Wally's eyes were open, and he was staring straight ahead between Zeref's feet. Somehow, that was more disturbing than if he was looking right up at him.

There was a piece of paper stuffed in his mouth. Zeref plucked it out and unfolded it. There were spots where decomposition had stained it and made the pen almost illegible. _Amateurs keep the head._

Zeref replaced the note, closed the door with the toe of his boot and went to his truck. Inside was a pair of work gloves he started keeping for _just in case_ s like this. He wore them to pick up the fridge, careful to tip it so whatever juices were inside sloshed to the back and not over his shoes.

He borrowed his neighbour's shovel again drove in no particular direction for an hour until he found a small, unassumed road that led to a place that looked remote and desolate. The truck rattled over bumps and Wally's head jarred in the truck bed. Zeref kept glancing out the window to make sure he was still secured. He didn't want to spend another night scrubbing the truck out with bleach.

He stopped when the road ran out and then walked for twenty minutes through a forest, awkwardly juggling the fridge and the shovel. He was sweating and bruised, bleeding and exhausted when he finally found a spot of swampy ground that was solid enough to dig in but soft enough to swallow whatever it was fed.

He dug the hole as deep as possible then kicked Wally and the fridge inside and covered him up again.

Three in the morning was creeping up by the time he made it back to his truck. His phone was lit up on the bench seat. August had been calling him for hours. Zeref turned his phone off.

He reversed his truck out of the road and back onto the deserted highway and didn't stop again until he was back at his apartment.

All he wanted to do was go inside, shower, and sleep, but he paused just outside his truck.

Smoke was drifting around the side of his apartment building, catching the streetlight and making it blaze. Zeref inhaled deeply and identified cigarettes. He didn't question it further. Not after Wally's abrupt and ungraceful reappearance. He grabbed the tire iron out of the Dakota and marched toward the source.

He didn't think of witnesses, it was still too early in the morning for that kind of thing, he only thought of the deep-seated anger he felt. If it was Jellal or Jude Heartfilia waiting for him, he was going to destroy them and think about the consequences later.

Cold iron bit into Zeref's hand and the smell of it was in his nose and for the second time in less than six months, he was running _hot_ when normally, he was cold, cold, cold. He walked so fast, he wasn't confident his next steps were going to be coordinated, and with every breath he drew, his adrenaline spiked.

He rounded the corner of his building with the pipe half raised.

Pale light from a phone screen limned pale hair.

Angel looked up from her texts, then between Zeref and the tire iron as if she didn't understand what it was or what he was doing with it. They stood that way for a tense moment, with Zeref's heart throbbing in his ears and his body screaming at him to follow through with it anyway because he didn't ever get this fucking wound up for nothing.

Then Angel blinked her big blue eyes and most of Zeref's fire extinguished. He lowered the half-cocked pipe. "What are you doing here?" Hadn't he told her to fuck off? He couldn't remember now; they were so on and off and his head was such a fucking mess. Just soup warmed in the microwave, so some parts were scalding, and others were icy and the middle ground where he was supposed to be warm just wasn't there at all.

"I came to talk."

He felt suddenly exhausted. "I don't have time. I need to get cleaned up."

She looked lost. Angel _never_ looked lost. She always had a destination in mind. He didn't like it when he thought he had people figured out but then they started acting weird. He found himself asking questions like, _did she see the mini-fridge?_ And, _did she see who left it?_ And, _or did someone tell her what was inside?_

Zeref took out his keys. "Come on."

Angel looked at the iron he still held, uncertainty flashing across her face for an instant. She might have liked his unpredictability but in the safe way that people preferred. Where they could watch him be terrible and cold and inhuman to other people but feel exempt. The truth was, no one was exempt. Cold was cold. Cruel was cruel, and he had no favourites despite what Angel and Ultear liked to think.

Zeref tightened his grip on his weapon, then remembered his perfectly crafted façade. He needed control and to have control, he needed to present himself in a certain way. He made his muscles relax and dropped the iron beside the broken concrete steps where it clanged and rattled before falling still. Angel jumped but pretended that she didn't.

Zeref unlocked his door and pushed it open and Angel followed him inside. The apartment was dark and Natsu's door was open. He was out again. Or still. Zeref couldn't remember if he saw him that morning. All his thoughts from earlier in the day felt scrambled and the only thing that seemed to matter was Wally finding his way back to Zeref.

"I need to shower," Zeref said and went to the washroom without waiting for a reply.

He ran the water so hot; his skin was red when he was through. He wanted to burn his clothes, too but needed to wait until Angel was gone so he didn't have to answer any questions. If she did start pummeling him, he didn't think he could keep the lie in. He might just laugh it out like a crazy person.

Jellal knew his secret. Which Zeref _figured._ You didn't hire a man to rough up your cousin's boyfriend and _not_ get suspicious when he went missing. Zeref had been trolling the news, though, and hadn't seen much on Wally, other than his girlfriend coming on tear-streaked, imploring people to come forward with information. Nothing ever came of it, though, so he was ashamed to admit rotten Wally's head caught him by surprise. He _always_ prepared for shit to go bad and he just _hadn't_ been. And he didn't know what was going on, if it was drug withdrawal or depression or if he was just fucking cracking apart because he hadn't been taking his medication, but his thoughts weren't acting like puzzle pieces he knew how to put together, they were just scattered all over, mismatching and no way to fix them.

Zeref left his soiled clothes on the bathroom floor. There was no need to touch them any more than necessary. He dressed in sweatpants and a tank top and came back into the living room to find Angel on the couch playing with the strap of her purse. She'd composed herself a bit and had adopted a stubborn look to her.

Zeref went to the kitchen to scare up some food. There was tuna in the fridge that he'd mixed for Natsu two days ago. He pulled it out and took the entire bowl with him back to the living room. He leaned against the wall he'd cleaned Wally's head from and cocked a brow in Angel's direction. "Well?"

She took in a deep, deep breath. "I'm late."

"I guess you better get going then," he said around his fork. The tuna was soggy now, just the way he preferred it.

"No, you idiot," she said with an eye roll. "I'm _late._ "

It sounded the same way. "Okay."

"For my period," she said clearly. "I'm fucking late. No period. For a week."

"Okay."

"I think I might be pregnant."

Zeref took another carefully measured bite without responding because, in this, he had control.

"Did you hear me?"

He chewed carefully before swallowing, thinking, thinking.

"Say something, you fuck."

Alright. "Did you test?"

Angel cast her eyes to the ground. "I got one, but I haven't done it yet."

His frustration welled up. "Why even come here, then?" He had no control over the snarl in his voice.

Her eyebrows pinched together. "Because I didn't get this way on my own and thought I didn't want to find out on my own, either, okay?"

Zeref threw the half-eaten tuna bowl on the table. "We used condoms."

"Did we?" she asked in a sharp way that poked holes through his certainty.

"Didn't we?"

"Not always."

"Well, why the hell not?" He was yelling without consciously deciding to.

"I don't know." Angel's cool exterior cracked and suddenly, her eyes were wet.

Zeref breathed in, and then again. He almost felt like he did when he ended Wally, everything was loud and very real; his thoughts were tumbling over one another, tangling more and more. Instead of making beds for dead men, he made them for a red-cheeked baby he wasn't even sure he _could_ like.

"Don't freak out," Angel said. "If you do—I'll freak out. And I can't. I've been keeping it together all day and I just…" She trailed off.

Zeref took another breath. "What do you want me to do?"

Angel was squeezing her purse so hard, Zeref was afraid for the straps. "Just—"

"What? Come into the bathroom with you while you piss on a stick?"

"Yes!" Angel blurted.

Zeref never considered himself a pillar. At least, not one anyone ever wanted to lean on, he was rusty and rotten. But Angel looked ready to throw all her weight on him and hope for the best. He sighed and held out his hand. Angel looked at it for a moment like she wasn't sure what to do with it. He was just about to drop it when she took it and let him help her stand.

She took out a box that said _Clear Blue_ and left her purse on the couch. Zeref led her to the bathroom and left the door open. She looked at him expectantly when he hesitated around the sink and he stepped further into the room, past the filthy clothes he'd reburied Wally in, so he was sitting on the damp edge of the bathtub. The same bathtub he'd sliced open his wrist in. The same bathtub he'd slept in when Natsu was passed out on the floor. It'd seen a lot of things.

Angel didn't look at him and didn't talk as she opened the pregnancy test and pulled out the instructions. Zeref let her read them over though he thought she should know all about them, given her profession.

There was a cricket outside; it croaked, putting Zeref on edge. He resisted shaking his legs to expel some energy.

Finally, Angel was ready. She turned around and pulled down her pants. She put the applicator between her legs. Zeref tried not to think too much over the sound of her peeing. He didn't want to put a ton of pressure on the outcome of her test. It wasn't like pregnancies were final. Things could be done about them.

_If she wants it done._

He had a hard time imagining Angel as a mother and wanting that car seat life. He didn't _know,_ though. Nine months from now, he might be throwing a baby blanket over the bleach stains he'd made while he was trying to erase a man from the world. He couldn't keep his mouth shut anymore. "Thoughts on abortion?"

"I'm not even done pissing yet," she said dryly.

"Yes or no?"

"I don't know." She grabbed toilet paper and wiped and left the test sitting in the sink.

Zeref watched the offending piece of plastic. "How long until that's ready?"

"A few minutes," she said.

They sat quietly for about thirty seconds. "We should get an abortion. If it's positive."

Angel fixed her pants and closed the toilet seat. She sat on top. "I don't know."

_I. Don't. Know._

A screaming child _couldn't_ be his life.

"Do you want to know what I was doing tonight?" Zeref asked suddenly.

Angel had been staring at the wall behind his head; she matched his gaze now. Whatever she saw in his eyes made her face go carefully blank. "No."

"Have you been watching the news lately?" he asked, ignoring her.

"No."

Except, she was lying. He could smell it like a shark smelled blood in the water. "There's been a girl on there. She's looking for her boyfriend. The police don't give a fuck, though, and she won't find him. Unless she's shown where he is. Which might happen if I don't figure out a way to get this asshole to stop fucking with me and Natsu."

Silence.

"Do you want to know why?"

"No."

Zeref ignored her again. "He came here looking for Natsu one night, a few weeks ago and—"

Angel abruptly stood and grabbed the test out of the sink. It was a tactic to get him to shut up and it worked. He watched her for long seconds, monitoring the set to her muscles, and the exact moment her shoulders dropped. He couldn't tell, though, if that was relief or resignation.

"What is it?" Zeref asked when Angel _still_ hadn't spoken and he could take it no more.

Angel turned on him and held up the negative sign. "Not pregnant."

Zeref wished he could say all his nerves left him at once, but he was still so spun, he could scream. He could break something.

"Don't look so happy," Angel said.

"It was a stupid fucking mistake and it never should have happened, so no, I'm not fucking happy and I'm not going to _look_ happy for scraping by it." And he'd all but told her he'd killed someone, all so she could see anything that came from him deserved aborting.

"Zeref…"

The front door was hammered upon, cutting Angel off. Zeref's blood pressure spiked so high, he had a sudden, flaring migraine. He pushed past Angel and stalked into the living room. He looked out the window before yanking open the door and saw a cruiser. He would have pretended he wasn't home after that but the man standing on his front step shifted and he realized that not only was he carrying someone, Zeref recognized his brother's favourite pair of Converse sneakers.

"Fucking hell." He pulled open the door and Gildarts peered in. He was on duty, the radio on his hip was chattering away about a domestic on Barton Avenue. Gildarts didn't respond to it, though. He only had eyes for Zeref.

"Where did you find him?"

"Someone called in and said they almost hit a drunk guy stumbling out into traffic," Gildarts announced.

Natsu rolled his head on his shoulders and found Zeref. His face remained blank as if not everything in his mind was buffering at the right speed.

"Thanks for bringing him home." And not to a jail cell, he left unsaid, but he thought Gildarts understood.

"Come on, kid. I'm not carrying you over the threshold." Gildarts crouched down so Natsu could get his feet under him. Natsu stumbled dangerously. Zeref grabbed his jacket. It was wet in spots. He was really grossed out at first until he realized that he didn't smell vinegary like vomit; Natsu had been rolling in a puddle or something.

Zeref tugged the jacket off his shoulders and pointed him in the direction of the couch. Natsu wobbled that way as if on autopilot. Zeref put the jacket on one of the wall hooks. He couldn't stop himself from checking to see if he'd missed any of Wally's blood, no matter how much he _knew_ he'd been thorough.

"I found this on him." Gildarts held up a filthy pipe, bringing Zeref back to the conversation.

Zeref glared at the offending piece of glass. "Fuck."

"He's been using for a while," Gildarts said in the concerned voice of an adult that cared about people, not a police officer just trying to do his job. He'd always been good to Natsu. Zeref never appreciated just _how_ good, though. "You had to know."

"I knew he was on something," Zeref admitted. "I just didn't know what." He'd suspected, but he was too ashamed to admit he'd thought it was kinder to let Natsu spiral.

Gildarts was careful to keep his judgement—and doubt—carefully concealed. "He needs help."

"I'll take care of it."

" _Real_ help."

"I'll take care of it," Zeref said more firmly.

Gildarts acted like he hadn't heard Zeref. "He can come to my place if he needs to. I like having him around."

"Thanks for bringing him home." Zeref closed the door and Gildarts didn't stop him. He turned and found Angel perched on the end of the couch with Natsu's wrist in her hand. She was making small circles with the tip of her nail and Natsu was looking at her with wide, reverent eyes. She was whispering to him and held out her hand. Natsu reached into his pocket, no doubt for drugs. Zeref felt his migraine worsen.

"Get out, Angel."

She startled like she'd forgotten he was there. "Out? I just got here."

"Get. Out." All his patience, all his goodwill, was used up. He was just a frayed wire now, sparking.

Angel stayed sedentary for another second and he thought she was going to challenge him again. Then she pushed her lips into a thin line and stood. She shoved her feet into expensive high heels that Zeref hadn't even noticed before and left, slamming the door so hard, the large bay window shook.

Zeref whirled on his dazed brother. "What's the matter with you?"

Natsu blinked to clear his thoughts. "Nothing" His voice was slow and his speech slurred, making Zeref angrier.

"Really? Because when Gildarts gets a call that some fucking kook is wandering down Main and he shows up and it's you, that says to me you're missing a few marbles."

Natsu found the wall easier to look at. "What the fuck do you care? I didn't hurt anyone."

He couldn't rightly tell his brother he cared about the police showing up to their place the very night he'd had a head delivered to him. Natsu would lose his mind. Zeref went with the next best thing. The expected thing. "You could have hurt yourself. And what if it wasn't Gildarts that answered that call? You could have been arrested—"

"For being stoned?" Natsu _did_ look at him now and rolled his eyes.

Zeref marched across the room and pulled apart Natsu's pockets without his permission, pushing Natsu's hands aside when he resisted. He found what he was looking for almost immediately. Gildarts had taken the pipe but not the drugs. If he'd been thinking clearly, he would have. Zeref cut him some slack—it wasn't every day you picked up your old neighbour's kid for public intoxication. "For this, fuck stick."

Natsu came suddenly alive. He stood and reached for the drug, oozing panic. Sober Zeref was faster and pushed Natsu back roughly. He fell into the musty couch with a noise of protest and tried to get up again. Zeref forced him down by the shoulder and leaned in so they were nose to nose. "I'm throwing this the fuck out, and if I see you with any again—" He trailed off, trying to temper the anger that'd gotten him into so much trouble lately.

"Then what?" Natsu asked, oblivious to Zeref's struggle.

Zeref remembered the boy he'd built snow forts with, the kid brother he'd take to the movies, the one that'd been obsessed with astronomy once he'd realized Lucy loved it. The one that wore the dog tooth around his neck and never took it off for anything. His brother. He breathed deeply and felt human again. "Just don't do it, Natsu. We don't fuck with heroin, remember?"

Natsu just stared.

"I'm going to take that as a 'Yeah, Zeref, I remember.'" He took the baggy into the washroom and only then remembered Angel's pregnancy test in the sink and his clothes on the floor. He flushed the drugs and put the pregnancy test back in its box. He threw that in the trash, along with his clothes, and took it all to the dumpster behind the apartment. It was the shallow, metal kind and it was empty of near everything.

Zeref doused his bag in lighter fluid and erased the evidence of his shitty night. When it was nothing but ashes, he came back in. Natsu was asleep on the couch. Zeref pulled a blanket over him and left him there, thinking he deserved the crooked neck he'd have in the morning.

He turned his phone back on so he could have an alarm in the morning. Angel had texted him since she'd left, saying things like, _I want to talk about what happened._ But what the fuck was there to say? They thought they made a mistake, but they _didn't_. They were home free. He silenced notifications from her and dropped into bed. Every time he closed his eyes, though, he saw Wally in that fucking mini-fridge, staring past his legs. He saw the inevitability of Jellal's message and no simple way around it.


	10. Chapter 10

I found an entrance to escape into the dark

* * *

Two weeks passed without Jellal and without Angel, lulling Zeref into a state of artificial relaxation.

Five days a week, Zeref pretended he went to work, rising early and wandering to August's apartment where he'd either rest in the stairwell until a more reasonable time, or he'd go to the nearby park and lay on the benches that spread out beneath the birch trees and watch the sky. He did that less often—people gave you strange looks when you showed up without a dog and without a child.

When the sun sank and the streetlights came on, he went out with August, scoped new marks, and then took the cars to sell. He was doing alright with them. Keeping his head above water with the money he made. He was able to take a couple hundred a week and stash it in between the pages of Duma Key for rainy days, of which there seemed to be many. On occasion, he'd open the book and notice Natsu had some rainy days of his own. The stash was never depleted completely, but he'd taken a few bills here and there. Zeref didn't know how to ask what he was doing with the money, so he didn't. It wasn't that hard to suss out anyway, not when Natsu came home smelling of sweet smoke and looked around with hollow eyes. He was supposed to say something, he knew, but growing up, his family always just let the dog lie until it died, and he never quite knew how to break that habit.

On the two days Zeref allowed himself off—Friday and Saturday, because people were out late those nights and it was more difficult to alleviate them of their cars—he still rose early, so he didn't fall into any bad habits.

This Saturday, he sat like a lump at the scratched kitchen table, bleary-eyed and dazed, thinking about drugs—methamphetamines, specifically, and how they could make him feel less dead—and staring at the wall where Wally's blood had splattered. He could almost see the pattern still. Some parts were darker than others.

He considered burning his apartment to ditch all the evidence. Acting like there was bad wiring in his fridge or dropping a cigarette on the carpet and letting it smoulder. That way, Jellal could leave Wally's feet, arms, torso, whatever the _fuck_ he wanted, and it would never come back to Zeref. Or Natsu.

It was a great idea with one fatal flaw—he didn't have content insurance and his apartment wasn't even legal, technically, which meant it was cheap. He'd just be out a lot of money and an affordable place to live.

And nothing spelled guilty like a burned-out building.

He huffed, blowing away the steam from his morning coffee.

Natsu's door swung open. Zeref sat straighter and watched someone unexpected exit.

It'd been some time since he'd seen Mirajane Strauss. Natsu used to play with her baby sister, Lisanna until he and Zeref moved to the city. Lisanna stopped hanging out as much, Natsu met Lucy, and then one morning, Lisanna disappeared for good.

People whispered that she'd met someone and run away with them—it was what young girls did, wasn't it? But then they found her floating like flotsam in a stormwater pond near Clover, days dead, and they realized something much more sinister had happened. They never found her killer.

Mira had changed a lot since the days Natsu and Lisanna used to build tree forts out of cardboard. Taller, thicker through her hips and heaver in her chest, less awkward. Still in black, though. Her dark nail polish was chipped and what was left of her makeup after last night was bold.

She didn't look at Zeref as she went into the washroom and tried to scrub the night from her face.

Zeref drank his coffee, thinking. Mira wasn't Brandish. She wasn't Ultear, either. She had issues of her own, but there was a thread of stable in her. One day when she wasn't as sad, she was going to get her shit together and she was going to have a job and probably a house, with kids in the yard. A dog, somewhere, was waiting for her to pick it out of the pound and bring it home.

She wasn't a really nice girl, like Lucy. But that was good. The Dragneels weren't a really nice family, were they? Really nice families didn't bury bodies in dumps or smoke heroin to forget about it. Mirajane was the kind of girl that could scrape into their lives and survive the fallout because she had fallout of her own.

Zeref offered her coffee when she remerged, fresh-faced.

Mira shook her head and left without a word. Which didn't at all destroy Zeref's fantasy of his brother moving on from Lucy.

Zeref pondered for another moment, thoughts picking through the possibilities and the ways he could manipulate the situation. The first thing that had to go was the drugs. And the most painless way to do that was to cut off Natsu's supply.

Zeref picked up his phone and went outside to call Brandish. She answered on the second ring. "You don't usually call me."

True, he didn't like Brandish. Maybe she was a little too much like him. Too blank, but not even trying to hide it. Zeref tried to keep the conversation short and sweet. "I want you to stop selling to Natsu."

Brandish got quiet.

"I mean it," Zeref emphasized. This was step one into ensuring he _moved on_ , from addictive things like heroin and Lucy Heartfilia.

"If he doesn't get it from me, he'll find someone else."

"That's good, Brandish. It'll be someone else I put in the ground, then. Right?" He could do it, too. The thought didn't make him nervous or scared. There was just coldness, and beneath that, the bubbling anger that always seemed to linger.

Quiet again. "What am I supposed to tell him?"

"Anything, if you sell it right."

"Yeah, but it doesn't matter what I say. He's not going to take no for an answer. You know that, right? He loves H."

Everyone that touched H loved it. That was the problem. "I've been nice about this, Brandish, but you've got my little brother addicted to fucking garbage. So, figure something out to help me fix it before I let you know just how angry I am." His palm was aching; he was digging his nails too far into his skin. Zeref breathed and loosened his death-grip. "Tell me you understand." He wouldn't have Natsu's tenuous recovery sabotaged by his love of destructive behaviour.

Brandish suddenly sounded nervous. "Alright."

Zeref ended the call and shook out his palm. Runners of blood dripped all the way to his fingertips. He sighed and lit a cigarette. He sat on the concrete steps and thought of the night he'd met and killed Wally. He'd been sitting just like this, and he'd been feeling just as dead in the head. He would take care of Brandish in gruesome ways if she didn't do what he asked, he knew it. And wasn't that more than a little scary? You didn't know quite what you were capable of until you'd done it, and now that he'd done the worst he could possibly do, nothing else seemed all that bad anymore.

Distantly, he knew that was a dangerous way to think.

Zeref thought of the pills Doctor Raquel had prescribed him. He still had some in the cupboard. He could take them. Maybe it would soften the ice in his mind and make the deplorable seem half as bad as it actually was.

_And what if when you took them, they stopped you from doing what you need to do?_

He'd continue the way he was, he decided. Cold and calculating, on the verge of violence, was better than being fuzzy and flirting with the idea of being just like everyone else.

* * *

When Natsu left that day to go cause whatever general havoc it was he caused when he was out of the house, Zeref trespassed into his room to complete the second part of his plan.

Usually, if he ventured this far, Natsu was hanging off his side, fucked up or passed out, and Zeref was putting him to bed. The summer sunlight streaming through the window turned everything on its head. It looked ingenue without the haze of alcohol clinging to skin or incomprehensive mutterings. Sad sighs filled with _Lucy_. This room held its share of secrets, though, he knew it.

Zeref glanced around quickly. Band posters, a clock, socks and boxers on the floor. A plate on the dresser from whatever it was Natsu ate for lunch. Headphones, the wires all fucked up and tangled together dripping off his nightstand. A pack of condoms. Zeref smiled grimly and hoped Natsu never had an Angel moment, sitting on the tub and spewing almost confessions about burying men in dumps while a girl pissed on a stick, hopefully thinking about the future she was considering choosing for herself.

He went to the bed and lifted the mattress. Natsu was simple to the point of innocence when he was a kid and as an adult, not much had changed. Zeref found a spread-out stack of porn mags that looked like they hadn't been touched in years, and, much more recently disturbed, a thick, brown brick of heroin and a filthy pipe.

Zeref took both, flushing one down the toilet in smaller bricks, and the other he took outside and smashed into a thousand fine grains of dirty glass. He kicked it across the pavement, so it wasn't as obvious.

He went back in and made himself another coffee, feeling satisfied.

* * *

Ultear sat on Zeref's couch and watched him arrange the shoes by the door, covering up the spots where Wally had expired. Sometimes, he liked to do that, so he didn't just sit there, staring at it. It seemed to help Natsu, too, who Zeref had caught cleaning the walls at least once a week.

They'd sat in silence since she'd gotten there. Zeref thought she just wanted to be near him, but then Ultear spoke and he realized she was trying to think of a way to broach a difficult subject. "Angel didn't really think she was pregnant, eh?"

Stunned, Zeref looked up from his scuffed work boots. "What are you talking about?"

"She _was_ late," Ultear explained, pretending he wasn't trying to be obtusely ignorant. "But only by a few days. And just before that, she was trying to figure out ways to get you to talk to her again. It's a little too convenient if you ask me."

Zeref rubbed his palms on his jeans and reopened his cuts. "She was freaked out."

"Was she really? Or is she just a great actress?"

Zeref narrowed his eyes. "How do you know so much, huh?"

Ultear lifted her shoulder. "It wasn't that hard to piece together. Angel literally told everyone she might be pregnant, and you were the only one that could be the father."

"Why the fuck would she do that?" He couldn't tell if he was mad or just confused.

"She thinks she's special when you fuck her." Ultear looked at him out of the corner of her eye, daring him to say she wasn't—hoping, he figured, if he knew Ultear half as well as he thought he did.

He wouldn't give her satisfaction either way—if he agreed, Angel wasn't special, that'd mean Ultear wasn't, either, and she'd take off. That wasn't okay. He didn't want to be alone, not completely. Though, if he said Angel _was_ special, Ultear might think that meant she was, too.

It was complicated.

Ultear's shoulders dropped when she realized he wasn't going to rise to the bait. She sunk into the couch and stared at him in the way that Ultear usually did when she wanted something.

Zeref took his time, covering Wally's imagined mess, then taking some dishes to the kitchen. He grabbed paper towel off the counter and mopped up the blood on his hand from where he'd opened his palm again.

Then he went to Ultear.

She was still where he left her. He stood over her and pushed her hair back from her face and kissed her. She didn't clutch him back, Ultear was still waiting for the day he wanted her as badly as she wanted him. Zeref gave her a taste, cupping her face like a lover might and letting out a short breath tainted with the sound of desperateness, before leaning back and undoing his pants. Ultear's eyes were feverish as he settled against her lips, stiff. She opened her mouth and massaged down his length with her warm, wet tongue.

Zeref threaded his fingers through her hair. Of all the girls that'd come to worship him for one twisted reason or another, she was the most devout. He loved that about her, and he hated it in equal parts. Would she get scared the way Angel did if he talked about Wally? Or would she turn that insane gleam on him, the one he'd sometimes glimpse in her eyes, and tell him what he already knew—Wally deserved it.

He felt his eyes once again drawn to the spot Wally had died. He closed his lids and tried to focus all his energy on _this_. On sliding against Ultear's tongue, on her hands on his hips, on her hurried breaths and small protests when he went too deep. Wally was a thing of the past and had no business haunting him.

But he was.

Zeref felt like he was going mad.

* * *

There was another week of relative peace before Angel knocked on his door again.

The sun was setting, and he was packing a pipe, thinking about the job he and August were going to do the next day when he saw her white-blonde hair move in front of the large bay window.

He considered ignoring her completely when she knocked, but Angel was a walking disaster and Zeref had never in his life been able to avoid those. Doctor Raquel used to tell him he craved the destruction because he craved attention it afforded him. He thought all psychiatrists said stuff like that, though, when they didn't understand what they were studying.

"It's open."

The doorknob turned and late-day sunlight filtered into the apartment. Angel followed behind it, smelling like perfume and cigarettes. She took her time, removing her shoes and pushing them up against the wall, right where a large chunk of Wally's brain had splatted. Zeref looked at them, imagining they were splashing in blood. Imagining Angel knew. Because he'd had a big fucking mouth.

"Hi."

Zeref looked away from the shoes and into Angel's blue eyes. They were the exact same colour as Fairy Lake under a July sun. A lot of men would lose their minds over them. He'd seen them tripping over her. Not him, though. Nothing pushed through his calm unless it was anger.

"What do you want?"

She folded her leg beneath her on the couch and propped her arm up on the back. Her breasts pushed together pleasingly. She'd gained some weight back. There were still hollows beneath her eyes, though, that makeup couldn't totally cover.

"I missed you."

Zeref packed his bowl more authoritatively and repeated, "What do you want, Angel?"

"You've been ignoring me for weeks."

"I've been ignoring _everyone_."

"Ultear says she's seen you."

Why was Ultear always the root of the problem? "Not really."

"So that's not her jacket?" Angel hiked her thumb toward the door where Ultear's white and black jacket hung.

Zeref cracked his pipe, he pushed down on it so hard. The glass lifted and sliced the pad of his thumb. Blood, warm and thick, dripped into the pipe. "It is."

Anger flashed through her eyes. "You just told me you hadn't seen her, though."

She was trying to catch him in a lie but Zeref didn't care for the games. "I think we need to straighten some things out. Ultear gets that I don't have time for anyone in my life, fulltime." Mostly. And if she didn't, she didn't try to force him to be something he wasn't.

Angel watched the blood slide over his thumb. "Just part-time party fucks?"

"Basically."

She caught his eyes. "Or did you get scared the other day?"

"When you lied about being pregnant?" Zeref let slip.

She looked like he'd slapped her, staring at him blankly for a moment. Then she got angry. "Why would you say that?"

"Ultear heard you talking about it." The cat was already out of the bag and there was no love lost between Ultear and Angel. Zeref decided to welcome the calamity.

"She should mind her own fucking business."

"And you should mind ours," Zeref concluded.

Angel paused, clearly liking the way _ours_ sounded. "Fine." Like that was apology enough, she took a dirty pipe from her pocket.

"Don't bring that shit in here," Zeref snapped when she worked a brick of heroin out of her pocket and started to shave at it.

Just like that, Angel's goodwill evaporated. "Oh? That's _right_. You're trying to get Natsu off it. I guess it'd be a lot harder if I told him Brandish's supplier didn't _actually_ get picked up, right?"

Word travelled frighteningly fast in a place like Magnolia.

Zeref felt himself get cold all over, ice water in his veins. "I can bury you, too, Angel."

Her body went still but for her eyes, those searched Zeref's for anything human. He didn't want her to glimpse the monster he spent so long burying, though. He stood and grabbed the door and opened it for her with an exaggerated flourish. "If you don't mind? I'm busy."

"You're such an asshole," Angel seethed.

He lifted his shoulder. "You knew that."

The truth took some of the fight out of her. She stood and stomped to the door, snagging her shoes on the way by to put on outside, as though she couldn't stand to be near him for another second. The thing was, now that Zeref knew what to look for, he could catch Angel in her lies. Her body bent just slightly toward his as she exited, and she looked back, twice. Zeref was just as guilty, he supposed. He pushed back the curtain and watched her stop on the sidewalk and fix her shoes. He longed to call her back, to get her to pull out her drugs and splay them on the table. He'd smoke until he couldn't see straight and then he'd fuck her until he passed out.

Someone moved toward her. Zeref glimpsed Natsu's pink hair. Angel straightened, swiped at her cheeks, and linked arms with him. She glanced back once more, daring Zeref to stop her.

Zeref swore and started to open the door but paused. He'd taken away Natsu's supply, ditched his drugs. There was going to be temptation all throughout his life. He was going to have to learn to say no some time, right?

Zeref dug his fingernails into his palm again, feeling the blood well and spill over. "He's got this," he said aloud, though he wasn't sure if it was true or not.

Natsu didn't come home that night, but around two, Zeref got a text from Gildarts reporting that Natsu had stumbled into the Bunkie he kept open for him, shaking and sober, and Zeref smiled. His brother was going to get better.

* * *

Another two weeks passed in a blur, pushing July into August. Natsu came home once in that time, to get more clothes and take the truck without asking. He didn't bring it back, either, which was annoying, but Zeref tried to take it in stride.

Zeref watched the streetlight stream through the large bay window, letting his mind wander between Angel and Ultear and the space between them, where Wally's head lay in a swamp and his body in a dump. When Zeref felt like everything was getting to be _too much,_ he'd take a sip of the vodka he'd lifted from the liquor store last week, straight from the bottle, and glimpse at his revolver. He'd pulled it out from beneath his bed and left it on the living room table. The single bullet lay beside the chamber. An entrance to escape into the dark.

Someone beat their fist against his door, jarring him so badly from his dark thoughts, the vodka slopped over the neck of the bottle and soaked his crotch.

"Motherfucker."

Another knock.

Zeref hesitated before pulling back the bedsheet curtain and seeing August waiting.

"Hi," August said as he entered.

"What are you doing here?" Zeref asked.

August held out a black duffle. "Your cut."

For the last car they'd lifted. They were getting better—this time, it was an old Audi they'd commandeered.

Zeref looked past August's shoulder. The street was sleepy and quiet. "Come in." Zeref closed and locked the door behind him.

August looked around the apartment only briefly, taking in the details quickly, a thief's prerogative. Zeref did a quick inventory as well. He hadn't left anything inherently valuable out. But August was looking at his gun.

Zeref acted like it didn't matter. He situated himself on the couch. August stood over him and dropped the duffle on the table.

"Count it."

Zeref pulled out stacks of green and flipped through them, thinking of all the things he could buy with that much money.

The first thing he did was separate a hunk for methadone, to remind himself that it was a commitment he'd made and needed to uphold.

"I have another job lined up," August said, taking the money. "Bigger this time."

Zeref cut the stack and made a portion for phone bills. "Where?"

"West end."

Rich town. "Yeah?"

"Big bucks if we can pull it off."

Jail time if they couldn't. Every car there had an alarm. They'd been practicing getting around them with mock-ups August had built by a guy he knew that was good with tech, but their success rate wasn't one hundred percent.

Zeref ran his fingers over the money, thinking about his mother and Natsu and the drugs he'd put down the toilet. Thinking about Wally and the police and if he couldn't win Jellal's love if he could buy it. People like him understood violence and green.

There was only one obvious answer. "I'm in."

August nodded briskly. "I'll call when I'm ready."

He showed himself out as Natsu walked in. They passed each other, strangers, and sized each other up.

Natsu closed the door and locked it firmly. Zeref kept his eyes on his money, fingering through it and portioning it for bills as if it was the most normal thing in the world. "Where have you been?"

"Out," was Natsu's short reply.

"I needed the truck."

Natsu shrugged. "It's back."

"I don't need it anymore." Zeref rolled his eyes.

"Then what's the problem?"

A lot, but who was counting? Zeref pushed down his anger. "Just tell me when you're going to take it."

Natsu loosened his scarf and threw it on a free hook by the door, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Which was Natsu's way of punishing Zeref for something. The trick now was finding out _what_. "Who was that old guy?"

Zeref didn't have a good answer for that. He tried to buy himself some time, pretending like he couldn't hear him standing half a room away. "Hm?"

"The guy that just walked out of here. Who was he?"

Zeref offered a piece of truth. "Just a guy I'm doing some work with."

"What kind of work?" Natsu needled.

"Just mind your own business, Natsu, the less you know about anything, the better."

"So, it's not legal work."

Zeref answered, "Everything's legal if you don't get caught." As if that settled everything, Zeref said, "There's pizza in the fridge. Beer, too, if you want."

Natsu wasn't as easily distracted now as he'd been when he was young. He didn't move an inch. "I deserve to know."

Zeref sat back. "Leave it alone."

Natsu dug his feet in; he could be so stubborn. "No. If it's going to bring the cops around, I want to know."

Zeref's eyes dragged to the stained wall. He _hated_ that kneejerk reaction, as if the body was still there, taunting him. Couldn't Wally just stay in the ground? "Nothing's going to bring the fucking cops around. I got everything under control." Zeref waved him off, annoyed for new reasons. "Get out of my face now, I got shit to do."

"You don't know—"

Zeref stood without meaning to and pushed Natsu's shoulder hard, angling him toward his room. He couldn't have this conversation anymore. "Go."

Natsu went. The door slammed so hard; the thin front window rattled. Zeref breathed out and shook his head when a moment later, he heard Natsu's phone hitting the wall. His exasperation turned to quiet pondering as he heard Natsu lift his mattress and dig around beneath it, searching desperately. Zeref was sure it wasn't for the porn. Heroin was like that, letting you out of its clutches for a few days, and then dragging you right back in.

Natsu's door ripped back. He was as furious as Zeref had ever seen him, hair stuck up from where he'd shoved his hands through, and his fingers balled into fists. "Where is it?"

Zeref lifted an eyebrow. "Where's what?"

"My pipe."

"Oh."

Natsu stalked toward him and got in his space. "Oh? Zeref? Where the fuck is it?"

Zeref looked at Natsu calmly. "I threw it out."

Natsu repeated, "You threw it out."

"I told you to get rid of it. You didn't listen. I made the decision easier."

Natsu's eyes got as hard as granite. It was startling to see him like that, it was almost like looking into a warped mirror. Natsu wasn't as cold as him, but sometimes, he would run so hot, it was like his thoughts shut down. "Like you told Brandish not to sell to me anymore."

Angel and her big fucking mouth. "Kinda, yeah."

Amazingly, Natsu put his anger on a frayed leash and marched past him to the door. Zeref grabbed his collar, holding him back. Maybe he didn't want his brother out, shaking the trees for heroin, or maybe he just wanted another glimpse into that mirror.

"It's late, you're not going out."

Natsu spun on him. Zeref's jaw flared with sudden pain. He stumbled back and wiped blood from his mouth. He looked at his brother in surprise and saw the fury in Natsu again. Something inside Zeref loosened, a knot, and relief flooded through him. An idea that he wasn't completely alone like he'd thought. An idea that Natsu understood the crazy in him.

Zeref tightened his hold on Natsu's collar. "You want to hit me? Come on, then." He barely recognized the sound of his own voice, strangled and gleeful.

Uncertainty flicked through Natsu's eyes, smothering the demon Zeref had caught sight of. Natsu backed up, squirming to get out of Zeref's iron grip. "Fuck off."

Zeref tightened his grip again. He wouldn't let it go so easily. "No, go ahead. Hit me. I deserve it." That was true. He _did_ deserve it. For Wally. For Angel. For Natsu. He _deserved_ it.

"Fuck off, Zeref."

He wouldn't. "I know you want to." He'd seen Natsu's barely contained rage. "So just fucking do it. Hit me." Zeref pushed his brother. "Hit me." Natsu stumbled back. " _Hit me,"_ he screamed and shoved Natsu again, harder, and Natsu did as he asked. Blood spilled across Zeref's tongue, sweet and bitter all at once.

Relief flooded through Zeref. "Again."

Natsu held up his hands. He looked horrified. "No. I'm done; I'm not doing this."

It was too late to back down now, though, the rage was in Zeref and it couldn't be stopped. He hit Natsu hard in the stomach, and then in the jaw, and Natsu fought back, he did. He just wasn't as untamed and vicious as Zeref. He wasn't as ruthless. He wasn't as cold. He didn't crave blood on his knuckles the way Zeref did.

Zeref didn't stop until Natsu was on the ground and there was blood on the wall, just like when Wally fell. A little more, and it could be just like that night.

_And you can bury him in the dump, too. And Jellal can put Natsu's head in a fridge and deliver it to you._

Coldness leeched out of Zeref, slow and steady. What was left was revulsion. This was his _brother._ He didn't want that for Natsu.

Zeref fell to his knees and turned Natsu's head toward him. There was blood and bruising, deep blue, like the colour of Angel's eyes. "Hey."

Natsu didn't move.

_Fuck._

"Come on, Natsu." He shook him; Natsu's head jarred back against the floor limply.

Desperate, Zeref got low and put his ear to Natsu's nose. He held his own breath as he waited.

There.

Warm breath, slow and shallow, crossed his cheek. Relief hit him like a tidal wave.

He looked at the mess with new eyes. Horror.

"Why did I do that? I didn't mean to. I didn't." He shoved his hands through his hair like that would help him analyze his own behaviour. Of course, he had no insights. He needed to talk to Raquel. She would have the answers.

Except, it was late. Her office wasn't open. Zeref tried to think of another person he could unload on. His mother would be horrified and would probably call the police if he told her he beat Natsu unconscious. Gildarts would lock him up. Angel would be afraid. He had no idea what Ultear would do, but he suspected she'd be on Natsu's side. They'd gotten close.

Without an outlet, Zeref did the only thing that seemed logical—started to clean up the broken glass on the floor—the TV had smashed, and the coffee table was broken, somehow. Someone had fallen through it.

But cleaning didn't seem like enough. Every time his eyes would travel back over Natsu's unconscious form, an unfamiliar and uncomfortable prick would slide beneath his skin and he'd have to look away.

"Fuck."

_Hit me._

"Fuck."

_I deserve it._

But Natsu didn't.

" _Fuck_!" Zeref yelled and felt helpless. As helpless as he had before starting Methadone. As helpless as he had when he'd slammed Wally's head against the wall and watched all the red spill out.

His cheeks felt damp. He rubbed his cracked knuckles against them. There was blood and there was wetness. He looked at Natsu, who was bruised and leaving a small puddle of blood beneath his open mouth.

His head felt like it was breaking apart, two halves of the same person fighting for control. Sane Zeref, who almost felt remorse, and furious Zeref, who watched his rage sweep him up and drift him along in the tide. He had no idea which one was the real him, or if he liked one better than the other.

He needed to get out of the apartment. Away from this.

He grabbed his truck keys and left without looking back.


End file.
